Therese Scarpelli Cory
I work on medieval theories of cognition, with special focus on self-consciousness, subjectivity, personal identity, intentionality, and modeling the mind. I'm also particularly interested in the Arabic influence on mid-thirteenth-century Scholastics such as Albert and Aquinas.
Current research projects:
"To Know is To Be: Aquinas's Metaphysics of the Intellect." This book project studies what one might call Aquinas's "metaphysics of intellectual being," i.e., his theory of intellectual being as a unique mode of being with its own characteristics properties. The resulting model of the mind has much in common with earlier models from late antiquity and medieval Arabic philosophy, and differs significantly from the Cartesian model of the mind as a space in which intelligible information is “contained” and “displayed.” The unique features of this model can help to address some persistent criticisms of Aquinas's theory of human knowledge relating to mental representation and reflexivity. This model also suggests a different way of thinking about immateriality and what it would mean for mental being to be immaterial. Supported by fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and American Friends of the Humboldt Foundation, 2014-2015.
Medieval Theories of Physical and Intellectual Light. The goal of this project is to ascertain whether the models of physical light circulating among mid-thirteenth-century Latin thinkers from Arabic sources can help us understand the role such thinkers ascribed to the agent intellect, an “intellectual light,” in facilitating intellectual cognition. Research for this project was supported by a short-term research grant in 2012 from the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Latin Reception of Avicenna's doctrine of the perpetually (if unconsciously) self-knowing mind
Interpretations of the Liber de causis, prop. 15 (on reflexivity and self-knowledge) in the 13th century
Angels vs. Humans: Aquinas's anthropology
Sensory reflexivity and consciousness in Aquinas
Current research projects:
"To Know is To Be: Aquinas's Metaphysics of the Intellect." This book project studies what one might call Aquinas's "metaphysics of intellectual being," i.e., his theory of intellectual being as a unique mode of being with its own characteristics properties. The resulting model of the mind has much in common with earlier models from late antiquity and medieval Arabic philosophy, and differs significantly from the Cartesian model of the mind as a space in which intelligible information is “contained” and “displayed.” The unique features of this model can help to address some persistent criticisms of Aquinas's theory of human knowledge relating to mental representation and reflexivity. This model also suggests a different way of thinking about immateriality and what it would mean for mental being to be immaterial. Supported by fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and American Friends of the Humboldt Foundation, 2014-2015.
Medieval Theories of Physical and Intellectual Light. The goal of this project is to ascertain whether the models of physical light circulating among mid-thirteenth-century Latin thinkers from Arabic sources can help us understand the role such thinkers ascribed to the agent intellect, an “intellectual light,” in facilitating intellectual cognition. Research for this project was supported by a short-term research grant in 2012 from the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Latin Reception of Avicenna's doctrine of the perpetually (if unconsciously) self-knowing mind
Interpretations of the Liber de causis, prop. 15 (on reflexivity and self-knowledge) in the 13th century
Angels vs. Humans: Aquinas's anthropology
Sensory reflexivity and consciousness in Aquinas
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Books by Therese Scarpelli Cory
Table of contents:
Introduction
Chapter I: The development of a medieval debate
Chapter II: The trajectory of Aquinas’s theory of self-knowledge, 1252–1272
Chapter III: Perceiving myself: The content of actual self-awareness
Chapter IV: Perceiving myself: Is self-awareness an intuitive act?
Chapter V: The significance of self-presence: Habitual self-awareness
Chapter VI: Implicit self-awareness and the duality of conscious thought
Chapter VII: Quidditative self-knowledge: Discovering the soul’s nature
Chapter VIII: Self-knowledge and psychological personhood
Bibliography"
Published Papers by Therese Scarpelli Cory
pinpoint an exact feature of a situation to which our emotional responses and subsequent judgments are responding. A stranger at the door looks safe, or not. A group of people standing around looks dangerous, or welcoming. This person sounds uneducated, or educated. We make further judgments and act on them. But what explains our first, often unarticulated,
impression? In this article, I want to apply some insights from Aquinas’s
philosophical psychology to a version of this phenomenon that is relevant to the theme of “racism”: namely, “implicit bias,” typically defined as an unconscious stereotype. For the purposes of this article, I will focus on implicit racial bias, though the applications to other kinds of biases will be obviously much broader. As I hope to show, Aquinas’s philosophical psychology suggests a way of analyzing this phenomenon according to which its existence becomes quite uncontroversial. Rather than conceptualizing implicit bias as a submerged or unconscious belief, we should think of it as a prerational imaginative frame that may or may not accord with our intellectual beliefs.
appears in Aquinas's writings, 1 want to show that his psychological
treatments of self knowledge do provide material for phenomenologically
interesting insights about moral self-knowledge and its role in moral development.' My task is to bring those dry bones to life, thereby illuminating how even the most technical aspects of Aquinas's philosophical psychology can offer valuable insights for spiritual theology. I will begin with the broader conceptual framework of Aquinas's general theory of self-knowledge, and then turn to his account of moral self-knowledge as a psychological phenomenon. Lastly, I will explore three practical implications of Aquinas's psychology of moral self-knowledge for the moral and spiritual life: (i) what steps must be taken to gain moral self-knowledge, (a) the danger of self-deception and false self-images, and (3) the indispensable role of an external guide or even a whole community.
It examines how the anonymous Arabic Liber de causis, prop. 14/15, on the soul's "return to itself," was interpreted and developed by two commentators on the Liber de causis in the 13th century: Roger Bacon and Ps-Henry of Ghent. These authors' different and sometimes surprising readings of the passage provide a window into early Scholastic developments in thinking on reflexivity, consciousness, and self-consciousness. In particular, we see Ps-Henry of Ghent using the text to develop a properly higher-order theory of consciousness.