The question boils down to whether relations exist in some manner in extra-mental reality or solely through the operation of the intellect, like second intentions (species and genera).
In all, three causes account for the operation of the intellect, according to James: 1) God as efficient cause; 2) the soul and its propensities as formal cause, and 3) the object presented by the senses as "excitatory" cause.
God does not require any mediator in the operation of his intellect with respect to creation; for example, he requires no concepts or propositions in order to know or to cognize.
Some important thinkers of the Enlightenment – notably Shaftesbury and Rousseau – present religion as founded on natural human sentiments, rather than on the operations of the intellect.
Albert's view of the procession of the universe from the "substantial light" of the divine intellect through the operation of a hierarchy of lesser intelligences is clearly perceptible in Dante's treatment of the cosmic intelligenze or sostanze separate in the Convivio [Conv. 2.4 5; Nardi (1992), 47 62].
The phantasm is therefore the efficient cause of intellectual knowledge, or better, of the first operation of the intellect (that of simple understanding).
However, substance's power is not expressed through the operations of will and intellect; the one substance does not act by conceiving a design in the intellect and bringing it to existence through the will (Ip23cl, Appendix, I).
This entails that for Burley, the cognitive process is aimed at the second operation of the intellect, namely judgment (e.g., "Sortes est homo"), and not simply to abstraction, since it is by means of judgment that the intellect subsumes a given token (the material thing) under its type (the natural species).
To tackle the challenges of our day, we needed the full operation of our intellect, Fry said.
