Cognition Epistemological Inquiry: Philosophy [Paperback]

Joseph Owens (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press (September 30, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0268007918
• ISBN-13: 978-0268007911
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #633,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Currently the finest book on cognition in English, July 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cognition Epistemological Inquiry: Philosophy (Paperback)

Joseph Owens, Etienne Gilson's most gifted student and without doubt one of the towering philosophical masters of the 20th century, has produced a work which is both an introduction to cognition and a profound philosophical reflection. His ideas are at once new and old, phenomenological yet fully in accord with the principles of Thomas Aquinas.

There is no other book on this subject which approaches its breadth, intelligibility, subtlety and simplicity. This book will someday rank as a classic. It is perhaps among the top twnety books every philosopher must have in his library.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction, but not the best work on the subject., April 27, 2009

By 

D.D.H. (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cognition Epistemological Inquiry: Philosophy (Paperback)

Joseph Owens was a powerful and subtle thinker. His articles and books on Thomistic metaphysics clarified many difficulties within the problem of being and existence that I had, and was not yet aware of. Next to Thomas Aquinas, no other Thomist has influenced my own thoughts in metaphysics as much as Fr. Owens.

However, this work on Cognition has received excessive praise here at Amazon. It is a good introduction, but by no means the definitive work on the subject. Thomist's should be ashamed of their Thomism in philosophy of mind if they believe this is the pinnacle of scholarship and presentation of the Thomistic noetic. Fr. Owens' foreword offers no such pretense. The book was published to be an introduction, and as such it is a fine work with few competitors (aside from just reading Aquinas's commentary on the De Anima, which has its difficulties as it isn't strictly "epistemological.") Aside from the intentions of the work the content is certainly less perspicuous than what one finds in his "An Elementary Christian Metaphysics." Owen's development of Aquinas's doctrine on the twofold operations of the intellect reaches a higher philosophical penetration in the shorter section on cognition in "An Elementary Christian Metaphysics" than it does in this larger work on Cognition.

The work is good for introductory students, and it is far more accessible to beginning philosophy students then "An Elementary Christian Metaphysics," which is far from elementary. Owen's is subtle enough to cover most of the essential and accidental points necessary for anyone interested in a Thomistic account of cognition. There is a clear presentation of the importance of Thomas's metaphysics of esse to the problems that beset epistemology and noetics, and few philosophers are able to bring these into relief as well as Fr. Owens (in part because Owens's position has perhaps become a minority position). It is this latter point that is perhaps unique to this work on Thomistic cognition that is not shared by accounts given by Haldane, Stump, Pasnau, Kretzmann, Geach, Kenny, Brennan, Braine, Piefer, et al. Of all the works of its kind that I have consulted, Joseph Owens' "Cognition" is perhaps the best introductory work on the subject. This is due to its breadth of content, philosophical rigor, clarity, and accessibility. The only other contender would be Robert Henle's Epistemology. Sadly both books are very difficult to acquire.

More serious students should look to works like John Piefer's "The Concept in Thomism," Yves Simon's "An Introduction to the Metaphysics of Knowledge," David Braine's tour de force and broadly Thomistic work "The Human Person: Animal and Spirit," Maritain's "Degrees of Knowledge," the Commentaries of John of St. Thomas, Robert Schmidt's "The Domain of Logic According to St. Thomas Aquinas," and various articles by Jonathan Jacobs and John Haldane. See also the growing scholarship that places Thomas in light of his Arabic predecessors like Avicenna and Averroes. Such comparisons by Deborah Black, Richard Taylor, and the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics are exceptionally illuminating.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Epistemology based on Aristotle and Aquinas, September 10, 2010

By 

Michael J. Whinihan "designated polymath" (Troy, Michigan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cognition Epistemological Inquiry: Philosophy (Paperback)

This book is essential for anyone interested in philosophy but who can't stand modern philosophers who doubt we can prove the existence of the world or that we can know the essence of the things we see. Following Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Owens describes the "existential judgment". Every time we perceive a new thing we abstract the essence of the thing, that is what type of thing it is, like "that thing is a tree", and we simultaneously judge that it exists.

Descartes couldn't prove the tree exists w/o proving God exists. Ockham denied that all the trees we see have anything in common, by denying that the universal "treeness" exists. Locke and Hume only saw an image of the tree and couldn't prove that that image was an accurate representation of the existing tree. And Kant denied that we can know the thing-in-itself in spite of sensing the phenomenon of the tree image. But the rest of us KNOW that what we have seen is a tree and that it exists.

Owens goes on to show that each of the sciences get along fine without epistemology. He discusses epistemology as of secondary importance, but with some valuable insights. And he criticizes those who think, in spite of each science's successes, that epistemology should come before each science, and that each science should restrict its field of study to fit the current theory of epistemology.

If you love philosophy, buy this book or write to the publisher and ask him to provide it to Amazon as an ebook, if he won't reprint it.