Secundum Duns Scoti sententiam cognitio abstractiva est, quae ab actuali existentia obiecti non dependet, et ideo speciebus impressis niti debet. Scotus nonnulla argumenta pro necessitate speciei intelligibilis ad cognitionem abstractivam universalem perficiendam praebet. Reiectis sententiis eorum, qui causam cognitionis aut obiectumsolum, aut intellectum esse putabant, Scotus causam totalem cognitionis ex obiecto cognito et intellectu ut ex causis partialibus essentialiter ordinatis componi concludit: species intelligibilis et a phantasmate, et ab intellectu agente causatur. Hoc modo ovus repraesentationis ordo oritur, in quo natura communis in modo universalitatis repraesentetur. Processus cognoscendi a Scoto ut successio dynamica actionum et passionum describitur. Ex dictis patet, Scoti de cognitione doctrinam a traditione Aristotelica discedere et germina epistemologiae modernae continere elucet.

According to Scotus, abstractive cognition is independent of the actual existence of its object, and must therefore rely on the intentional species. Scotus presents several arguments in favour of the necessity of the species intelligibilis for abstractive universal cognition. After dis¬cussing opinions that ascribed exclusive causality in the process of cognition either to the intellect or to the object, Scotus arrives at the conclusion that both the object and the intellect act as essentially ordered partial causes of cognition: the intelligible species is caused both by the phantasm and the active intellect. Thus results a new order of representation, in which the common nature is represented as universal. The process of cognition is described by Scotus as a dynamic succession of active and passive phases. On the basis of these and other charac¬teristic features, Scotus’s epistemology can be described as departing from the Aristotelian tradition, and as the locus of the first appearance of the motives of modern epistemology.