Inventio subiecti. The invention of the modern subject (10)

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Matthieu d'Acquasparta distinguishes knowledge by inferential reasoning(arguitio), by direct inspection and by speculation
This device juxtaposes inferential knowledge, in the sense of Augustinian natural inference, with what the post-Scotian ^14th century will work on in the form of the distinction between "intuitive knowledge" and "abstractive knowledge"
Analysis of the first mode of knowledge
Natural inference and natural sign: the smoke (effect)-fire (cause) relationship
Roger Bacon's theory of natural signs: inference, similarity, causality
Recognition of others is inferential (arguitive): from 'x speaks' I infer 'x has a soul like me'
Self-knowledge is the basis for recognition of others
Two medieval theories of self-knowledge
- The Aristotelian theory concerns the intellect: the intellect knows itself as it knows other things
- The Oliveian theory concerns man: man knows himself through the immediate feeling he has of his own life, his own existence, through the certainty of being and of being himself, subject and principle of his acts (PGA*)
Analysis of Aristotelian theory(De anima, III, text 15)
Averroes' interpretation: to know itself, the material intellect must have within it a form that is the form of something other than itself. To grasp itself as thinking, it must think something else
Difference between man's intellect and the separate Intellects
Olivi's critique of the Aristotelian thesis: the Aristotelians explain how the intellect can become the intellect of itself by becoming the intellect of something else
Olivi's thesis is that there is a simple subject of all my mental and vital acts, and that I am and know myself to be this subject.