Abstract

Seeing a color, hearing a sound, imagining a triangle, remembering a friend, thinking about apples: these are all instances of cognitive acts. In the later Middle Ages, the notion of cognitive act was an object of sustained scrutiny. In what follows, I first present the main assumptions that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thinkers shared on this subject. Then, I consider five controversial issues. Many more issues and different ones might have been chosen, but I hope that the few I am going to mention will give some taste of the richness of the medieval debate about this topic.