This essay explores some of the central aspects of Aquinas's account of mental representation, focusing in particular on his views about the intentionality of concepts (or intelligible species). It begins by demonstrating the need for a new interpretation of his account, showing in particular that the standard interpretations all face insurmountable textual difficulties. It then develops the needed alternative and explains how it avoids the sorts of problems plaguing the standard interpretations. Finally, it draws out the implications of this interpretation with the aim of correcting some persistent misunderstandings of the connection between Aquinas's views and those developed by contemporary philosophers of mind.

Introduction In this paper I examine William Ockham's theory of judgment — in particular, his account of the nature and ontological Status of its objects. ‘Judgment’ (Latin iudicio) is the expression Ockham and other medieval thinkers use to refer to a certain subset of what philosophers nowadays call ‘propositional attitudes’. Judgments include all and only those mental states in which a subject not only entertains a given propositional content, but also takes some positive stance with respect to its truth. For Ockham, therefore, as for other medievals, a judgment is a type of mental State that includes attitudes such as belief, knowledge, opinion, doubt, faith, and so on.

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