How do we come to know things?

[utunumsint]

Is knowledge apprehending a thing as it is in thought, or is thought an instrument by which we apprehend a thing as it is in reality?

Do we move from thought to things or do things produce knowledge in the intellect which is the raw material on which judgements are made? Does intelligence emerge as human beings apprehend the external world?

Is common sense to be distrusted as successive approximations of reality get produced as scientific knowledge increases? Or is it a feature of common sense that it is constantly critical of itself and always trying to return to and adjust itself to the external reality it perceives in being such that truth and being are the same thing?

God bless,
Ut

 

[lmelahn]

JuanFlorencio will doubtless have his own thoughts on this, but I will answer as I understand it (which is largely influenced by Aquinas, obviously).

Is knowledge apprehending a thing as it is in thought, or is thought an instrument by which we apprehend a thing as it is in reality?

The latter. (I think that can be shown by simple recognition of how our intellection works.) Of course, apprehension is only the first “degree” of knowledge; our knowledge becomes “perfect,” or complete, when we judge the correspondence of our apprehension (or lack thereof) with reality.

That is one of the great divides in philosophy: it places—believe it or not—Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas on one side, and most of the other philosophers I have encountered on the other (Plato; St. Augustine; Duns Scotus; practically all the moderns, including Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, and especially Kant; and, in their own way, the vast majority of the Postmoderns).

I am not saying, in any way, that these philosophies are the same. What each one considers the object that is known, and they way that it is know, is very different. However, they all have in common that the proper object of knowledge is the interior representation (whatever it is they want to call it: recollection in Plato; esse obiectium in Duns Scotus; the “idea” in the most of the moderns; the “object” in Kant; the sache in Gadamer).

With Aristotle and Aquinas (as I mentioned) there is identity of knower and thing known, according to the form. Hence, our intellects practically “touch” the things that we know. (As I as explaining to JuanFlorencio, in Aristotle and Aquinas, the “essence” is not something “inside”*or “underneath” the thing—at least, not primarily. Rather, it is that thing. A dog is an essence; you and I are essences; and so on.)

What permits that union between knower and thing known is the thing’s form: first and foremost its substantial form (because substances are easier for us to apprehend than their properties); and, as we get to know the thing better, also its accidental forms.

Do we move from thought to things or do things produce knowledge in the intellect which is the raw material on which judgements are made? Does intelligence emerge as human beings apprehend the external world?

At least the most fundamental judgments are imposed on us by the things outside of us. Just by opening our eyes, we are forced to make hundreds of judgments—most of them barely perceptible to our consciousness, but they are there, if we take the time to reflect on them.

We are capable of doing more, however, than simply recognizing what is available to our direct observation. We can use our reason to gain knowledge that we otherwise would not have. We can assume the knowledge that reliable witnesses have given us. (E.g., I have never seen Tokyo, but I have sufficient reason to trust the maps, dictionaries, and encyclopedias that say it exists and is the largest city in Japan—if not in the world.)

We can even use our reason (and specifically our ability to make analogies) to investigate things that cannot be seen at all: subatomic particles, for example; or (as we are doing now) the inner workings of the human intellect; or the nature of substance.

Is common sense to be distrusted as successive approximations of reality get produced as scientific knowledge increases? Or is it a feature of common sense that it is constantly critical of itself and always trying to return to and adjust itself to the external reality it perceives in being such that truth and being are the same thing?

God bless,
Ut

Common sense (not the internal sense, here, but the knowledge that can be gained even before systematic knowledge is attempted) should never be disdained. That is one of the best criteria for judging a philosophy: does it account for the phenomena that everyone sees? Does it hold up in the face of those things that are the easiest for us to know?

That is why a philosophy such as Descartes’ (which denies the reliability of the senses) or Kant’s (which, in addition to being skeptical of the reliability of the senses, denies the knowability of the “thing in itself”) should be viewed with caution. There are a lot of good things to be found in both authors; but their fundamental presuppositions are flawed right from the get-go.

There is a maxim in logic: contra factum, non argumentum est: no argument is to be made against plain fact.

A philosophy can, and should, explain how the phenomena accessible to direct observation arise, but should never contradict them.

 

[StrawberryJam]

JuanFlorencio will doubtless have his own thoughts on this, but I will answer as I understand it (which is largely influenced by Aquinas, obviously).

The latter. (I think that can be shown by simple recognition of how our intellection works.) Of course, apprehension is only the first “degree” of knowledge; our knowledge becomes “perfect,” or complete, when we judge the correspondence of our apprehension (or lack thereof) with reality.

That is one of the great divides in philosophy: it places—believe it or not—Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas on one side, and most of the other philosophers I have encountered on the other (Plato; St. Augustine; Duns Scotus; practically all the moderns, including Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, and especially Kant; and, in their own way, the vast majority of the Postmoderns).

I am not saying, in any way, that these philosophies are the same. What each one considers the object that is known, and they way that it is know, is very different. However, they all have in common that the proper object of knowledge is the interior representation (whatever it is they want to call it: recollection in Plato; esse obiectium in Duns Scotus; the “idea” in the most of the moderns; the “object” in Kant; the sache in Gadamer).

With Aristotle and Aquinas (as I mentioned) there is identity of knower and thing known, according to the form. Hence, our intellects practically “touch” the things that we know. (As I as explaining to JuanFlorencio, in Aristotle and Aquinas, the “essence” is not something “inside”*or “underneath” the thing—at least, not primarily. Rather, it is that thing. A dog is an essence; you and I are essences; and so on.)

What permits that union between knower and thing known is the thing’s form: first and foremost its substantial form (because substances are easier for us to apprehend than their properties); and, as we get to know the thing better, also its accidental forms.

At least the most fundamental judgments are imposed on us by the things outside of us. Just by opening our eyes, we are forced to make hundreds of judgments—most of them barely perceptible to our consciousness, but they are there, if we take the time to reflect on them.

We are capable of doing more, however, than simply recognizing what is available to our direct observation. We can use our reason to gain knowledge that we otherwise would not have. We can assume the knowledge that reliable witnesses have given us. (E.g., I have never seen Tokyo, but I have sufficient reason to trust the maps, dictionaries, and encyclopedias that say it exists and is the largest city in Japan—if not in the world.)

We can even use our reason (and specifically our ability to make analogies) to investigate things that cannot be seen at all: subatomic particles, for example; or (as we are doing now) the inner workings of the human intellect; or the nature of substance.

Common sense (not the internal sense, here, but the knowledge that can be gained even before systematic knowledge is attempted) should never be disdained. That is one of the best criteria for judging a philosophy: does it account for the phenomena that everyone sees? Does it hold up in the face of those things that are the easiest for us to know?

That is why a philosophy such as Descartes’ (which denies the reliability of the senses) or Kant’s (which, in addition to being skeptical of the reliability of the senses, denies the knowability of the “thing in itself”) should be viewed with caution. There are a lot of good things to be found in both authors; but their fundamental presuppositions are flawed right from the get-go.

There is a maxim in logic: contra factum, non argumentum est: no argument is to be made against plain fact.

A philosophy can, and should, explain how the phenomena accessible to direct observation arise, but should never contradict them.

Sure. That’s why this really really famous scientist that used direct observation in his art, ended up in your in house prison. If he had used philosophy to explain it, he would not have been imprisoned? Your theory is flawed.

 

[lmelahn]

It seems that JuanFlorencio is substantially in agreement with lmelahn about the correspondence of our knowledge of the external world with the realities they represent. Or at the very least, there is a correlation. But Juan seems to be holding on to an idealist distrust of the naive data of the senses. Still, he seems to agrees with lmelahn that the naive sense impression is the start of all our knowledge.

As I explained—and JuanFlorencio can correct me if I am wrong, as regards his system—I assert not just an imitation of reality, but identity of the knower with the thing known. Our degree of penetration of that thing can vary: we learn from the outside in, so to speak; from the most general aspects of a thing, down to its specifics. But what we learn about it is not simply an imitation, but the actual substance (i.e., the thing as such) and its features and characteristics (i.e., its accidents) and its effects (operation).

JuanFlorencio asserts that we construct relations and systems of relations (models) with differing degrees of fidelity.

Hence, one difference, I believe, is that I think we have direct contact with the reality. We achieve that contact though various instruments (our sensory faculties, our interior senses, our agent intellect), representations (the sensory and intellectual species), and principles (the substantial and accidental forms); but our contact is direct and immediate.

Moreover, the protagonist in all of our direct experience is the thing known, not the knower. If there is any construction, it is done through our ability to reason, not (strictly speaking) in our intellects.

There is also, at the base of this, a different metaphysical perspective. I think it is rather straightforward to recognize that we immediately apprehend substances (a.k.a essences, a.k.a., supposits) as unified and whole. They are evidently (at least on some level) the source and cause of their properties and characteristics (accidents).

It follows that we can’t reduce substances to their constituent parts, nor can we reduce their inherent qualities and relationships to operation (or “interaction”). In particular, operation needs a principle: something to mediate between the substance itself, and its particular effects; and that “something” is what I have called “active potency.” (Examples of active potencies, on the spiritual level, are our intellects and wills; on the corporeal level, our system of muscles that allows us to move; on the inanimate level, such physical properties as kinetic energy, mass, momentum, and so on.)

Once we realize that all off these principles—active potencies, their corresponding actions, passive potencies that receive action—emanate from a single source—namely, the substance—the apparent complexity of the system becomes much reduced. They are simply tiers or layers of successive emanation from the substance. (As we begin to consider purely spiritual realities—like angels—we have to conclude that the substance itself emanates from an ulterior source, the intrinsic act of being.)

Am I missing something here? JuanFlorencio - is there something in particular you disagree with Imelahn about, apart from his general tendency to look favorably on the modern applicability of Aristotelian and Thomistic thought.

By the way, thank you both for engaging in this dialog.

No problem! It has helped me to hone my position a lot, actually.

I’ve learned a great deal from Imelahn, but I am also trying to get a better handle on JuanFlorencio’s perspective. JuanFlorencio - if you would be willing, I would appreciate understanding more about your positive philosophical convictions about how the mind comes to know. Does our knowledge start with the external world? Or do we never get beyond our minds? Or is this a caricature of what you believe?

God bless,
Ut

 

[lmelahn]

Sure. That’s why this really really famous scientist that used direct observation in his art, ended up in your in house prison. If he had used philosophy to explain it, he would not have been imprisoned? Your theory is flawed.

If you think there are aspects of my theory that are incoherent, I would be happy to hear your objections.

 

[lmelahn]

I am not saying, in any way, that these philosophies are the same. What each one considers the object that is known, and they way that it is know, is very different. However, they all have in common that the proper object of knowledge is the interior representation (whatever it is they want to call it: recollection in Plato; esse obiectium in Duns Scotus; the “idea” in the most of the moderns; the “object” in Kant; the sache in Gadamer).

That should be esse obiectivum. Firefox actually does have a Latin spell-checker. I will install it now…

Interestingly, Descartes speaks about “la realité objective” in a similar vein. I strongly suspect that he read Duns Scotus, or someone who was influenced by Duns Scotus—possibly Francisco Suárez, S.J. (That would make sense, because Descartes was educated at a Jesuit school in La Flèche.)

 

[davidv]

Sure. That’s why this really really famous scientist that used direct observation in his art, ended up in your in house prison. If he had used philosophy to explain it, he would not have been imprisoned? Your theory is flawed.

This is a red herring that does not address the point.

 

[utunumsint]

Common sense (not the internal sense, here, but the knowledge that can be gained even before systematic knowledge is attempted) should never be disdained. That is one of the best criteria for judging a philosophy: does it account for the phenomena that everyone sees? Does it hold up in the face of those things that are the easiest for us to know?

That is why a philosophy such as Descartes’ (which denies the reliability of the senses) or Kant’s (which, in addition to being skeptical of the reliability of the senses, denies the knowability of the “thing in itself”) should be viewed with caution. There are a lot of good things to be found in both authors; but their fundamental presuppositions are flawed right from the get-go.

There is a maxim in logic: contra factum, non argumentum est: no argument is to be made against plain fact.

A philosophy can, and should, explain how the phenomena accessible to direct observation arise, but should never contradict them.

Sure. That’s why this really really famous scientist that used direct observation in his art, ended up in your in house prison. If he had used philosophy to explain it, he would not have been imprisoned? Your theory is flawed.

StrawberryJam makes an interesting point here. There are areas of science that show that our direct phenomenological observations are clearly wrong. Perhaps this is also what inspired Descartes to distrust the data we receive from the senses in order to retreat back to the cogito as the only sure source of knowledge that cannot possibly be in error.

But maybe we could look at the geocentrist error again to see where exactly the error in common sense observation arises:

1. 
   *]We open our eyes.
   *]We see the sun in the sky.
   *]The sky appears to be circling the earth.
   
   Now, in this very brief list, the geocentrist was not wrong about the sun being in the sky. He was wrong about the relationship of the earth with the sun.
   
   So lets go back to Imelahn’s short criteria for judging a philosophy:
   • 
     *]Does it account for the phenomena that everyone sees?
     *]Does it hold up in the face of those things that are the easiest for us to know?
     *]Contra factum, non argumentum est: no argument is to be made against plain fact.
     
     Now, point 3 is where the error occurs, but the error is in our interpretation of the data of the sense dues to the lack of necessary scientific information. Point 3 is still a fact that must be explained, that any scientific theory must provide a satisfactory explanation for. How is it that the sun can move around the earth to our senses, and yet it is actually the earth that is moving around the sun? How do you explain one fact that clearly contradicts the other? You cannot simply say, what everyone senses is wrong. That our faculty of sight is flawed and we should no longer trust the information our sense give. No - the argument must explain how our observations can be true, from our perspective, and yet not true from the perspective of the solar system.
     
     The same thing is true for optical illusions. The plain fact is that the senses see shimmering water on roads on very hot days that disappear when one gets closer. That is a fact of the senses. It is up to science to explain the fact that what our sense of sight perceives as water is not really water at all, but heat waves. Any account of the phenomenon must include an explanation of this fact.
     
     The criteria that lmelahn is proposing is that any philosophy (and I would include any science) must account for the data that common sense provides. As Imelhan said “Common sense (not the internal sense, here, but the knowledge that can be gained even before systematic knowledge is attempted) should never be disdained.”
     
     God bless,
     Ut

 

[utunumsint]

As I explained—and JuanFlorencio can correct me if I am wrong, as regards his system—I assert not just an imitation of reality, but identity of the knower with the thing known. Our degree of penetration of that thing can vary: we learn from the outside in, so to speak; from the most general aspects of a thing, down to its specifics. But what we learn about it is not simply an imitation, but the actual substance (i.e., the thing as such) and its features and characteristics (i.e., its accidents) and its effects (operation).

JuanFlorencio asserts that we construct relations and systems of relations (models) with differing degrees of fidelity.

Hence, one difference, I believe, is that I think we have direct contact with the reality. We achieve that contact though various instruments (our sensory faculties, our interior senses, our agent intellect), representations (the sensory and intellectual species), and principles (the substantial and accidental forms); but our contact is direct and immediate.

I’m fuzzy on what you are trying to get at here, so maybe you can help me clarify. I have a direct experience of what my senses are telling me about my keyboard. My sight tells me if it black with white characters on each key. My fingers are telling me the keys offer some resistance as I hit them. I can also hear the sound of clicking and clacking as I type. I get no data from my sense of smell, and I chose not to exercise my sense of taste at this moment.

Now, that all of these facts about the thing I am knowing are now internalized and real within me. But not as a copy or a representation, but as union with the actual, physical keyboard I am typing on.

JuanFlorencio is saying (perhaps) I am only interacting with a representation of what is real, but whatever contact I have with the thing, it is not the thing, in itself. The thing in itself is just correlated with the the data we present. I suspect he would justify his point by saying what the senses tell us about a thing is desceptive and incomplete. Our sense of unified substances is a construct of our minds. What we really have is one massive network of interactions. Our senses only give us a small fraction of what is going on outside of us. Science helps us open the door to many other facsimiles of reality, but there is no real exhaustive access to things.

Moreover, the protagonist in all of our direct experience is the thing known, not the knower. If there is any construction, it is done through our ability to reason, not (strictly speaking) in our intellects.

Ah - so there are two classes of knowledge then? Objects produced from sense congnition that our sense give us direct access to. We perceive them as unified wholes. This is the raw material of our reasonings.

There is also, at the base of this, a different metaphysical perspective. I think it is rather straightforward to recognize that we immediately apprehend substances (a.k.a essences, a.k.a., supposits) as unified and whole. They are evidently (at least on some level) the source and cause of their properties and characteristics (accidents).

It follows that we can’t reduce substances to their constituent parts, nor can we reduce their inherent qualities and relationships to operation (or “interaction”). In particular, operation needs a principle: something to mediate between the substance itself, and its particular effects; and that “something” is what I have called “active potency.” (Examples of active potencies, on the spiritual level, are our intellects and wills; on the corporeal level, our system of muscles that allows us to move; on the inanimate level, such physical properties as kinetic energy, mass, momentum, and so on.)

These active principles, you would call souls in vegetative, animal, and human beings?

Once we realize that all off these principles—active potencies, their corresponding actions, passive potencies that receive action—emanate from a single source—namely, the substance—the apparent complexity of the system becomes much reduced. They are simply tiers or layers of successive emanation from the substance. (As we begin to consider purely spiritual realities—like angels—we have to conclude that the substance itself emanates from an ulterior source, the intrinsic act of being.)

I suppose the accusation that might appear is that this is simply a reification of our conceptual model onto a reality that has no such unifying principles.It is hard to start thinking otherwise since it is such a temptation to reduce things to their constituent parts such that we have no such intrinsic act of being. That everything is merely a construct. Human beings a merely clever products of evolution.

Thank you for your detailed explanation. It has given me much food for thought.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Ugg

Post 406 should be for point 3, The sun appears to be circling the earth.

God bless,
Ut

 

[inocente]

Forget the word “agent,” then. How, then, does space-time come to be curved? Does it not have something to do with massive objects? Very massive objects curve space-time much more than less massive ones, right?
Spacetime curves in the presence of mass.

Aristotle’s metaphysics is not directly interested in these matters. The sun is a substance, or collection of substances, like any other. Its specific structure is a matter of physics to study.

Aristotle is interested in questions such as whether physical bodies have an intrinsic unity, or whether we human beings impose that unity on reality.

Apologies for the delay in responding.

If we look at an atom, of hydrogen for example, we find that 99.9999999999996% is empty space. Most of its mass is in its very tiny nucleus, and most of that mass comes from the relativistic jiggling of the constituent quarks. So a massive object is virtually all space. Instead of saying that spacetime curves in the presence of mass, we may as well say spacetime curves in the presence of spacetime!

Dividing the world into what we think are agents and objects and empty space, may not be how the world really is. The question is perhaps not so much whether physical bodies have unity, but whether reality consists of separate physical bodies at all. Perhaps we merely impose it as a necessary reductionism for us to make sense of the world.

(As an aside, the seemingly ethereal notion that everything is everything is politicized in a song by Lauryn Hill. If everything is what it is because of everything else, then without everything being how it is, nothing would be as it is. And so the way to change the world, she says, is to have love with integrity, and then the world must perforce change for the better. - youtube.com/watch?v=i3_dOWYHS7I)

*It seems to me that you are assuming—and Dr. Huggett is assuming—that “rigor” is to be equated with “quantifiability.” Not a few people think that, under the influence of such great thinkers as Descartes and, in a different way, Galileo. However, that is a debatable position that would need to be established. That is, indeed, a task that belongs to philosophy.

I happen to think that Huggett is illegitimately transferring Zeno’s paradoxes from philosophy to mathematics, for the reasons I explained in my earlier post. (Namely, that Zeno’s presuppositions are pre-mathematical, so they need to be dealt with before we even get to the mathematics.)*

I don’t think it’s to do with math but simply with rigor, but that might be another thread.

Perhaps in a different thread, we could discuss some of these cracks. I am not suggesting that Aristotle is perfect, just that we can work with him.

What, too soon? I think the question is whether those of his ideas discussed on this thread can produce new knowledge, and it seems doubtful.

 

[lmelahn]

StrawberryJam makes an interesting point here. There are areas of science that show that our direct phenomenological observations are clearly wrong. Perhaps this is also what inspired Descartes to distrust the data we receive from the senses in order to retreat back to the cogito as the only sure source of knowledge that cannot possibly be in error.

Yes, that is essentially how Descartes starts off. You can find it in his Discourse on Method, and also (a bit more fleshed out) in his Metaphysical Meditations. (I highly recommend the Discourse. It is short and well written—It was intended for a “popular” audience. I don’t agree was Descartes on his method, as you can probably guess, but it is important to know his ideas.)

I am not sure that I would go so far as to say that our phenomenological observations are “wrong” exactly. It is generally our conclusions that are false. See my comment below.

But maybe we could look at the geocentrist error again to see where exactly the error in common sense observation arises:

1. 
   *]We open our eyes.
   *]We see the sun in the sky.
   *]The sky appears to be circling the earth.

1. 
   

   Now, in this very brief list, the geocentrist was not wrong about the sun being in the sky. He was wrong about the relationship of the earth with the sun.

   I think you are correct, but I have the following observations:
   
   We see the sun “rise” in the east and “set” in the west every day. The natural conclusion is that the sun circles around the earth. However, if you think about it, that conclusion is (in essence) a hypothesis that explains (or attempts to explain) our observation, not really an observation as such.
   
   Nor is that hypothesis entirely wrong: space and motion (even assuming Newtonian mechanics and Euclidean geometry here) are intrinsically relative. (And yes, Aristotle was already aware of that, although that fact is obscured by his theory of “sublunary” and “superlunary” entities.) From the point of view of the observer on earth, in a way, the sun does circle the earth each day.
   
   The novelty of the heliocentric model of the solar system is in the explanatory theory: namely, that the sun, which dwarfs the planets in terms of its mass, dominates the gravitational attractions in the Solar System. The phenomena that we observe—the rising and setting of the sun—are more reliably and convincingly explained by heliocentrism than by geocentrism. But the theory does not contradict our direct observation. The sun rises and sets in exactly the same way now as it did for Ptolemy. (OK, give or take a bit of wobbling of our axis of rotation and a little slowdown of our rotation speed .)
   

   So lets go back to Imelahn’s short criteria for judging a philosophy:
   

   • 
     *]Does it account for the phenomena that everyone sees?
     *]Does it hold up in the face of those things that are the easiest for us to know?
     *]Contra factum, non argumentum est: no argument is to be made against plain fact.

   • 
     This is a good rule of thumb for any branch of knowledge, not just philosophy.
     

     Now, point 3 is where the error occurs, but the error is in our interpretation of the data of the sense dues to the lack of necessary scientific information. Point 3 is still a fact that must be explained, that any scientific theory must provide a satisfactory explanation for. How is it that the sun can move around the earth to our senses, and yet it is actually the earth that is moving around the sun? How do you explain one fact that clearly contradicts the other? You cannot simply say, what everyone senses is wrong. That our faculty of sight is flawed and we should no longer trust the information our sense give. No - the argument must explain how our observations can be true, from our perspective, and yet not true from the perspective of the solar system.

     The same thing is true for optical illusions. The plain fact is that the senses see shimmering water on roads on very hot days that disappear when one gets closer. That is a fact of the senses. It is up to science to explain the fact that what our sense of sight perceives as water is not really water at all, but heat waves. Any account of the phenomenon must include an explanation of this fact.

     I was explaining this to someone else on this thread (I can’t remember who at the moment).
     
     What is going on here with the mirage is that there are two very similar looking phenomena. Both water and hot pavement (or sand) by nature shimmer brightly and even have a mirror-like effect in the sunlight.
     
     The only error here is mistaking one thing (pavement/sand) for another (water). It is not our senses that are deceiving us.
     
     (Think of this: if our senses were deceiving us, how could we ever be “undeceived”? And yet it is very easy to be undeceived: just walk a little closer, and the mirage disappears, whereas the water remains.)
     

     The criteria that lmelahn is proposing is that any philosophy (and I would include any science) must account for the data that common sense provides. As Imelhan said “Common sense (not the internal sense, here, but the knowledge that can be gained even before systematic knowledge is attempted) should never be disdained.”

     God bless,
     Ut

     I agree .

 

[lmelahn]

I’m fuzzy on what you are trying to get at here, so maybe you can help me clarify. I have a direct experience of what my senses are telling me about my keyboard. My sight tells me if it black with white characters on each key. My fingers are telling me the keys offer some resistance as I hit them. I can also hear the sound of clicking and clacking as I type. I get no data from my sense of smell, and I chose not to exercise my sense of taste at this moment.

Right, but there is a prior step here: the first thing you recognized was that it is a keyboard. (Just a caveat: a keyboard is not technically a substance, but an “artificial substance” or, better said, an aggregate of substances—plastic, metal springs, or whatever it is made out of. But, in any event, we apprehend aggregates as a unit before we learn about their constituent parts—and as an aggregate, evidently, of substances, which are not yet consciously specified.)

Only then were you able to apprehend the properties and operations—at least logically speaking. (The apprehension of the accidents might be temporally simultaneous, but it is still logically based on the apprehension of substance.)

It was, however, through the operations and qualities of the keyboard that you were able to arrive at the substance (aggregate of substances, in this case): its operations reached your sense organs, which gave information to your internal senses, which gave data to your intellect, and so on.

In classical language, we say that the operations and accidents are id quo intellegitur (that by which something is known); whereas the substance is id quod intellegitur (what is known).

Now, that all of these facts about the thing I am knowing are now internalized and real within me. But not as a copy or a representation, but as union with the actual, physical keyboard I am typing on.

Right: again, we go through the operations and accidents to the substance(s), and then from the substances, we penetrate back into the accidents (as our knowledge of those substances becomes more acute). Knowledge is “parabolic,” as it were.

JuanFlorencio is saying (perhaps) I am only interacting with a representation of what is real, but whatever contact I have with the thing, it is not the thing, in itself. The thing in itself is just correlated with the the data we present. I suspect he would justify his point by saying what the senses tell us about a thing is desceptive and incomplete. Our sense of unified substances is a construct of our minds. What we really have is one massive network of interactions. Our senses only give us a small fraction of what is going on outside of us. Science helps us open the door to many other facsimiles of reality, but there is no real exhaustive access to things.

JuanFlorencio will need to speak for himself, here. But that is certainly the prevailing view outside of Aristotle and St. Thomas and their followers (and among Aristotelians, generally, only in those who interpret Aristotle in the light of St. Thomas).

Ah - so there are two classes of knowledge then? Objects produced from sense congnition that our sense give us direct access to. We perceive them as unified wholes. This is the raw material of our reasonings.

In a way. There is knowledge obtained by abstraction—that is, direct experience. That is the strongest and most vivid knowledge for us. Then, there is knowledge that is derived from this direct knowledge. It is no less valid, but it is, of course, intrinsically less reliable, unless it is backed up by something greater than direct evidence (e.g., supernatural faith, which is backed up by the power and authority of God).

(Incidentally, there is no such thing as false “knowledge,” technically speaking. There is only false opinion. For Aquinas, as for Aristotle, knowledge is true by definition.)

These active principles, you would call souls in vegetative, animal, and human beings?

Not exactly. The soul of a living creature is its substantial form. The active principles I listed here are all technically qualities, hence they are accidental forms (or simply “accidents” for short).

I suppose the accusation that might appear is that this is simply a reification of our conceptual model onto a reality that has no such unifying principles.It is hard to start thinking otherwise since it is such a temptation to reduce things to their constituent parts such that we have no such intrinsic act of being. That everything is merely a construct. Human beings a merely clever products of evolution.

That is basically the idea behind Nominalism. I would reply using Aristotle’s argument: do a bunch of bricks make a house? No: there has to be something more than that; they need (in Aristotelian parlance) an accidental form. Substances—particularly, but not only, living creatures—show an irreducible unity. That unity is corruptible (the creature can die), but undeniable as long as the creature is alive.

It goes back to that criterion that I laid out: does the theory explain the plain facts, or contradict them? Nominalism, and exaggerated reductionisms in general, reduce what we spontaneously apprehend as a whole entirely to its constituent parts (a position that is anything but obvious). The problem, therefore, is with the theory (Nominalism), not the facts.

I was joking earlier that it takes a philosopher, or a scientist imbued with a reductionist philosophy, to say that a dog is just a bunch of cells. No one would spontaneously say that unless he learned it in school.

Thank you for your detailed explanation. It has given me much food for thought.

God bless,
Ut

A pleasure!

 

[lmelahn]

Apologies for the delay in responding.

If we look at an atom, of hydrogen for example, we find that 99.9999999999996% is empty space. Most of its mass is in its very tiny nucleus, and most of that mass comes from the relativistic jiggling of the constituent quarks. So a massive object is virtually all space. Instead of saying that spacetime curves in the presence of mass, we may as well say spacetime curves in the presence of spacetime!

Before I go on, I will mention that I studied biochemistry as a major in college, so I have some limited expertise in chemistry. (This is not meant to put off discussion; it is just so you know that I am not pulling these arguments out of thin air—no pun intended.)

The idea that an atom of hydrogen is “mostly empty space” is actually rather problematic. That is frankly a holdover from the Bohr model of the atom. It is a mistake to apply the macroscopic notion of volume on the subatomic level, at least without keeping certain things in mind.

For example, where is the hydrogen’s lone electron “located” in space? The question itself is actually flawed: it assumes that an electron is like a little grain of sand, with a definite volume and location. In reality, it is spread out in a spherical orbital that surrounds the whole space around the nucleus. Its density is greatest near the nucleus, and it gradually “thins” out into space, with the density tending to zero.

All of the experiments conducted so far suggest that electron orbitals should be regarded as continuous regions of electron density, interrupted by discontinuities called “nodes.” (The orbitals function something like standing waves.) That holds true also with molecular orbitals, the ones formed by covalent bonding.

(The article on orbitalsWikipedia is pretty good.)

My point is that properties such as mass and volume (the ones used for normal Newtonian, or even relativistic, physics), as such, are macroscopic properties. The fact that there is a theory explaining how mass and volume emerge from subatomic realities is fascinating, but it does not mean that mass and volume are therefore unreal.

Dividing the world into what we think are agents and objects and empty space, may not be how the world really is. The question is perhaps not so much whether physical bodies have unity, but whether reality consists of separate physical bodies at all. Perhaps we merely impose it as a necessary reductionism for us to make sense of the world.

I think here, what holds is the logical principle I mentioned a bit earlier: contra factum non est argumentum—there is no argument to be made against plain fact. Outside my window, there is one pine tree abut 25 feet from my window, and another one about 40 feet from my window. That is what I mean by “separate.” If it turns out that the atoms of those trees are mostly “empty space” (a idea that I find misleading, for the reasons I mentioned above), then, well that is interesting, even fascinating, but the end result
is the trees that I see. (Electrons do an excellent job of repelling each other, after all, which is what produces “solidity”…)

(As an aside, the seemingly ethereal notion that everything is everything is politicized in a song by Lauryn Hill. If everything is what it is because of everything else, then without everything being how it is, nothing would be as it is. And so the way to change the world, she says, is to have love with integrity, and then the world must perforce change for the better. - youtube.com/watch?v=i3_dOWYHS7I)

I will grant that all physical things are in relation to all other physical things. (And all human beings are in relation to all other human beings, too—that is “solidarity,” which I think is what the song was referring to.)

I don’t think it’s to do with math but simply with rigor, but that might be another thread.

Sure. I will simply observe that the Modern philosophers (notably Descartes, but also, say, Spinoza) made it their ideal to make mathematics the only model for scientific rigor, so the problem—although not mathematical in nature per se—is tied up with mathematics.

What, too soon? I think the question is whether those of his ideas discussed on this thread can produce new knowledge, and it seems doubtful.

It won’t produce new knowledge in physics or chemistry. But it certainly helps in other areas: for example, ethics. (For example, why can’t I just chop off someone’s arm—or my own arm, for that matter—for the fun of it? Well, in part it is because a person forms a substantial unity.)

 

[lmelahn]

In a way. There is knowledge obtained by abstraction—that is, direct experience. That is the strongest and most vivid knowledge for us. Then, there is knowledge that is derived from this direct knowledge. It is no less valid, but it is, of course, intrinsically less reliable, unless it is backed up by something greater than direct evidence (e.g., supernatural faith, which is backed up by the power and authority of God).

I need to make an important clarification, here.

Whenever we make a judgment (if we had to formalize it, it would be an internal statement in the form “Subject is Predicate”), the capacity or faculty that is producing that judgment is the intellect. This is the “perfect” act of the intellect. (Apprehension is its “imperfect” act, the necessary precursor to making a judgment.)

I can get my judgment from direct experience, or else I can get that judgment by stringing together other judgments.

When we formalize that process, we get the so-called “syllogism”; e.g., to use a rather banal example:

All dogs are animals.
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido is an animal.

The conclusion is also a judgment: it is an act of the intellect, like any other. However, it is different from those that come from direct experience, because it is the result of compounding two judgments together (the two premises).

This act of compounding judgments, so as to obtain more derived judgments, is called “reason,” in the strict sense of that word. (Hence, in Aquinas, “reason” is not exactly the same thing as “intellect.”)

Of course, the judgments produced in this way are only as good as the logical nexus, or link, between the judgments, which is why they are less reliable as such.

 

[utunumsint]

I need to make an important clarification, here.

Whenever we make a judgment (if we had to formalize it, it would be an internal statement in the form “Subject is Predicate”), the capacity or faculty that is producing that judgment is the intellect. This is the “perfect” act of the intellect. (Apprehension is its “imperfect” act, the necessary precursor to making a judgment.)

I can get my judgment from direct experience, or else I can get that judgment by stringing together other judgments.

When we formalize that process, we get the so-called “syllogism”; e.g., to use a rather banal example:

All dogs are animals.
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido is an animal.

The conclusion is also a judgment: it is an act of the intellect, like any other. However, it is different from those that come from direct experience, because it is the result of compounding two judgments together (the two premises).

This act of compounding judgments, so as to obtain more derived judgments, is called “reason,” in the strict sense of that word. (Hence, in Aquinas, “reason” is not exactly the same thing as “intellect.”)

Of course, the judgments produced in this way are only as good as the logical nexus, or link, between the judgments, which is why they are less reliable as such.

I see. So the level of apprehension is that which is immediately derived from the senses through the abstracting intellect. Reason is based on this apprehension.

This faculty of apprehension that abstracts from the material sense impressions - I believe it is called phantasms - is immaterial, is it not? One could not open up a human brain and point to the abstracting intellect location, right? Or a location responsible for reasoning, as per Aquinas and Aristotle? Modern neuroscience would appear to disagree though. FOr example, this web page ascribes the facility of abstract reasoning to the temporal lobe.

Do you know of any literature that tries to explain this in terms of modern neuroscience? I suspect that neuroscience today is mostly trying to figure out how the brain works in terms of material and efficient causality to the exclusion of formal and final causality - the very things that you are claiming human apprehension and reasoning deal with.

God bless,
Ut

 

[JuanFlorencio]

It seems that JuanFlorencio is substantially in agreement with lmelahn about the correspondence of our knowledge of the external world with the realities they represent. Or at the very least, there is a correlation. But Juan seems to be holding on to an idealist distrust of the naive data of the senses. Still, he seems to agrees with lmelahn that the naive sense impression is the start of all our knowledge.

Am I missing something here? JuanFlorencio - is there something in particular you disagree with Imelahn about, apart from his general tendency to look favorably on the modern applicability of Aristotelian and Thomistic thought.

By the way, thank you both for engaging in this dialog. I’ve learned a great deal from Imelahn, but I am also trying to get a better handle on JuanFlorencio’s perspective. JuanFlorencio - if you would be willing, I would appreciate understanding more about your positive philosophical convictions about how the mind comes to know. Does our knowledge start with the external world? Or do we never get beyond our minds? Or is this a caricature of what you believe?

God bless,
Ut

I hope Imelahn will not regard this as the end of our discussion, because he left some important questions unanswered.

Let me take some time to give an answer to your questions. First…

 

[JuanFlorencio]

When I was a boy, a plumber came to our house to make some repairs. He brought one of those old kerosene torches to weld copper pipes. I was there with him when he was making his preparations. He opened the tank and poured some kerosene inside; then he closed it. He started pulling and pushing a piston several times and then he turned a knob. A fine spray of kerosene started to flow through a tube in the upper part, and he ignited it with a match. It was the first time I saw a device like it, and I was marveled. The plumber left the torch on the floor and I immediately went there to inspect it closely. I was looking for an orifice somewhere in the device. The plumber saw me and said: “be careful! What are you looking for?”. I said “I am looking for the orifice through which air comes into the tank”.

An orifice?- he asked.

Yes -said I- when you move this piston in and out, air must be entering into the tank.

But what are you saying boy? There is no such orifice! Air is created in the tank when I move the piston. Have you ever handled one of this things?

Never.

There you are, you don’t know. I do know!

But I found the orifice, and told him: “I think this is it. If I close it with my finger while you move the piston no spray will…”

I don’t have time for your experiments, boy; I have to work right now- said him.

Each of you will remember situations like this (some of them will probably be much more complex). What can we learn from such experiences concerning knowledge?

At that time I was studying what we call here the secondary school, and in the Chemistry class I had learned about the law of conservation of mass. The plumber didn’t had the chance to go to school but he was very skillful in his job. Both of us were in front of the marvelous device, but we dealt with it differently. In particular, he knew he had to manipulate the piston and how to do it to produce a spray. I comprehended he had to do it as well. But our ideas about what was happening there were different. The device and its parts had different meanings to us. How did them acquire those meanings?

Obviously, I didn’t formulate the principle of mass conservation by myself, but there was a lot of experience and intellectual work behind it, and I was benefited with it. In contrast, the plumber’s experience was very limited. Had him allowed me to do the experiment and see the result he probably would have discarded his interpretation. His experience would have been expanded. Some other related things would probably have changed in his views (Though not necessarily. Inconsistencies are very common in our views. It would not have been strange if he retained other ideas inconsistent with his new experience. This happens in the “mental order”, as Imelahn calls it).

Couldn’t we say that I had a perception sophisticated by the theory that I had learnt? Because it was this theory which shed meaning over the device. And this theory was the systematization of a great amount of experiences. Knowing the device was a kind of absorption or assimilation of it into the theory. This is something we usually do: we concentrate our relevant past (or part of it) and project it into our present. Then, our present becomes sophisticated and meaningful to us.

So, the fascinating device was there, in the hands of my friend the plumber and in front of me. Was it the same reality to each one of us? It wasn’t, and it does not have to do with our senses (which I have never distrusted. I have certain degree of astigmatism, but it is clear to me that it is a complex and very real -I guess you need me to stress this, but I wouldn’t need it- interaction; so, I trust even my astigmatic vision). It had to do with the systems of relations that each of us had developed.

It is clear to me that my understanding of the device was not produced by the action of its “substance” over my intellect. Did it produce the plumber’s understanding of it at least? Assuming it did, we should be careful with those actions of reality upon our intelligence. We should develop a method to become impressed by reality in a dependable fashion, because the partial reality to which we are exposed at any given moment could not impress us more that it is able to; but we know that at any given moment the partial reality to which we are exposed does not display its full richness, because it depends on the state of its surroundings.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Aristotelians, who reserve the name of substances to certain objects, could say that my example does not apply in general, because the kerosene torch is not a substance but a conglomerate of I don’t know what. However, I have no doubt that it has general application. Read for example “On Sense and the Sensible”, by Aristotle, and as you are reading it ask to yourself: “is there any previous theory here leading the interpretation of reality or, instead, did reality impress a given understanding on the intellect of someone?”. Do not stop judging if what you read is true or false, because that is of no interest for the moment; just reflect on how could such or such conclusion be obtained. Let’s see just as a small part of it, when he writes about vision. He says (First section, Part 2):

“But as to the nature of the sensory organs, or parts of the body in which each of the senses is naturally implanted, inquirers now usually take as their guide the fundamental elements of bodies. Not, however, finding it easy to coordinate five senses with four elements, they are at a loss respecting the fifth sense. But they hold the organ of sight to consist of fire, being prompted to this view by a certain sensory affection of whose true cause they are ignorant. This is that, when the eye is pressed or moved, fire appears to flash from it. This naturally takes place in darkness, or when the eyelids are closed, for then, too, darkness is produced.”

“This theory, however, solves one question only to raise another; for, unless on the hypothesis that a person who is in his full senses can see an object of vision without being aware of it, the eye must on this theory see itself. But then, why does the above affection not occur also when the eye is at rest? The true explanation of this affection, which will contain the answer to our question, and account for the current notion that the eye consists of fire, must be determined in the following way: Things which are smooth have the natural property of shining in darkness, without, however, producing light. Now, the part of the eye called “the black”, i.e. It’s central part, is manifestly smooth. The phenomenon of the flash occurs only when the eye is moved, because only then could it possibly occur that the same one object should become as it were two. The rapidity of the movement has the effect of making that which sees and that which is seen seem different from one another. Hence the phenomenon does not occur unless the motion is rapid and takes place in darkness. For it is in the dark that that which is smooth, e.g. the heads of certain fishes, and the sepia of the cuttlefish, naturally shines, and, when the movement of the eye is slow, it is impossible that that which sees and that which is seen should appear to be simultaneously two and one. But, in fact, the eye sees itself in the above phenomenon merely as it does so in ordinary optical reflexion.”

Beautiful, wasn’t it? How laboriously Aristotle’s mind worked to offer what he believed was a stronger foundation to the hypothesis that the organ of sight consisted of fire; a hypothesis which he himself nevertheless rejected. Please, entertain yourself looking for comparisons and modeling on this text.

But Aristotle had a different opinion about the organ of sight. He believed it was composed of water:

“Democritus, on the other hand, is right in his opinion that the eye is of water; not, however, when he goes on to explain seeing as mere mirroring. The mirroring that takes place in an eye is due to the fact that the eye is smooth, and it really has its seat not in the eye which is seen, but in that which sees. For the case is merely one of reflexion. But it would seem that even in his time there was no scientific knowledge of the general subject of the formation of images and the phenomena of reflexion. It is strange too, that it never occurred to him to ask why, if his theory be true, the eye alone sees, while none of the other things in which images are reflected do so.”

“True, then, the visual organ proper is composed of water, yet vision appertaining to it not because it is so composed, but because it is translucent- a property common alike to water and to air. But water is more easily confined and more easily condensed than air; wherefore it is that the pupil, i.e. the eye proper, consists of water. That it is so is proved by facts of actual experience. The substance which flows from eyes when decomposing is seen to be water, and this in undeveloped embryos is remarkably cold and glistening. In sanguineous animals the white of the eye is fat and oily, in order that the moisture of the eye may be proof against freezing. Wherefore the eye is of all parts of the body the least sensitive to cold: no one ever feels cold in the part sheltered by the eyelids. The eyes of bloodless animals are covered with a hard scale which gives them similar protection.”

Continues…

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Can you see the relations that are being established here between a number of observations from different sources?

Embryos’ eyes are cold and glistening
Water flows from eyes
Water is cold and glistening
Eyes are constituted of water
Water freezes when it is too cold
There must be an intermediate condensed state of water which is not ice.
Eyes must be constituted of condensed non-frozen water
Oil does not freeze when water freezes
Oil in the eyes must protect them against freezing
We don’t feel cold in the eyes.
Our eyes are well protected against freezing.
Mirroring happens on smooth things
Eyes have smooth surfaces
Other smooth things different from the eyes do not see
Seeing is not mirroring.
Eyes are translucent.
Water and air are translucent
Air does not see
Eyes see because they are translucent (???)

A great deal of Aristotle’s experiences brought together into a unique moment to get to a conclusion: Eyes see because they are composed of translucent condensed non-frozen water. Obviously, this conclusion was not the result of an impression made by an eye upon Aristotle’s mind.

Do you think otherwise?