Apparentia in the thought of Nicholas of Autrecourt: Intentionality, intersubjectivity, and probabilism in the status of mental being

This article sets out to clarify the status of the mental being in the work of Nicholas of Autrecourt (1295/99-1369) concerning the notion of appearance. Three features of mental being emerge from the cognitive process as described by Nicholas, namely (1) the intentional reference of cognitive acts to the thing, (2) the multiplication and comparison of different knowledge in order to grasp the thing in its wholeness, and (3) the mind’s grasping of reality, which occurs, in Autrecourt’s view, in a probabilistic and non-certain way. These three aspects of mental being constitute the outline of Autrecourt’s particular perspective on knowledge.