The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at Kings College

London and the LMU in Munich. Online at www. History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode will be an interview about William of Occam's Philosophy of Mind with

Susan Rohr Toland, who is Associate Professor in Philosophy at St. Louis

University. Hi Susan. Hi, Susan.

Hi.

Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

We are going to be talking about Occam's philosophy of mind, something that's been discussed quite

a lot in literature on him him including things you've written.

And I think maybe the most basic question in the philosophy of mind is what does it mean to grasp something with the mind at all

because that will tell us something about what he thinks the mind is.

So let's say I'm looking at you right now

what does he think is happening?

So to get a sense for what it is for the mind to grasp something, you'd have to probably begin with his distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition.

So if you are grasping a... between intuitive and abstractive cognition.

So if you are grasping a particular object immediately

in front of you, that's going to require appeal

to his notion of intuitive cognition.

So that might be the place to start.

Okay, so what's the difference between intuitive and abstractive cognition?

Okay, well, alchemy actually has a kind of technical way of marking this distinction but we could get a handle on it as just a first approximation by just thinking of intuitive cognition along the lines of our own maybe more pre-theoretic notion of perception.

...