Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 2 - The modal framework of Duns Scotus’s argument for the existence of a first cause

  • Edited by Giorgio Pini, Fordham University, New York
  • Book:
    Interpreting Duns Scotus
    Published online:
    23 December 2021
    Print publication:
    06 January 2022, pp 44-58

  • Summary

    This essay examines Duns Scotus’s celebrated modal argument for the existence of a first cause in the light of his most extensive discussion of modality: namely, the account of the senses of ‘potency’ in his questions on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, book IX, qq. 1–2. The author holds that it is possible to give two alternative reconstructions of Duns Scotus’s argument for the existence of a first cause depending on which of two alternative interpretations is given to the term ‘potency’. First, ‘potency’ can be taken as what is metaphysically possible. In this interpretation, the potential is co-extensive with ‘being’. Second, ‘potency’ can be taken to mean what is opposed to the actual. In this second interpretation, being in potency is a kind of non-being. The conclusion is that, contrary to what might first appear, it is the second interpretation of ‘potency’ that should be preferred if we want Duns Scotus’s argument for the existence of a first cause to work.