Abstract

Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine that being is the first conception of the intellect is supported by his position that the intellect grasps the more universal or common prior to grasping the less universal or common in an act of confused cognition. John Duns Scotus argues to the contrary that the intellect grasps the less common before the more common or universal in its first acts of confused cognition. This paper engages Scotus’s criticism at Quaestiones De Anima 16 that Aquinas’s main argument in ST I, 85.3 falls into a fallacy. The paper also proposes a solution to Scotus’s charge that Aquinas’s argument falls into a fallacy as well as a line of further inquiry into an ambiguity within the position of Scotus on one of the modes of confused cognition that is key both to his own position and to his critique of Aquinas.