Thank you.
It is not only to understand something which is beyond sensory experience that we use analogy. We do it when we want to understand sensory experience too.
We don’t need analogy to know those things provided directly by experience. This experience is, rather, the raw material for our analogies.
We do need analogy for any knowledge that goes
beyond direct experience. That applies to the inner workings of our sensory faculties, certainly. A sense cannot observe itself as it senses. (The intellect, however, yes. See below.)
And it is because we do not become the thing known; but remaining different from it, we compare it with other objects with which we have had similar interactions before. If we find an object B with which we can compare the object A, then we say we know the object A.
Note that I have specified on various occasions we become the thing known
intentionally. Evidently, our own substance remains the same; it is merely our intellects that change so as to accommodate the form of the thing known.
One of my difficulties I see with the theory you propose is that I don’t see how we can compare A with B without first apprehending A and B (which means intentionally “becoming” A and also B).
In general, we know objects by establishing relations between its composing elements, or by describing their interactions, or by comparing them with other objects (which display similar interactions). So, if we meet an object which is simple and unique, we remain muted in front of it: we are in front of it but we don’t know it.
So how do I establish relations between objects without first knowing what they are? (This is in line with my comment above).
I am not denying that contrast can help us to know things better; I am just not getting my head around the idea that the relation can come before the understanding of what we are relating.
Suddenly (even after saying that it is a mystery -sorry for you, Linus), you talk about spiritual substances, and the intellect, and the will, etcetera), as if you were talking about your right and left hands. But what you are doing here, Imelahn, is to model what you understand by the word “intellect”. …], but you need to realize that those rough comparisons were not impressed on your intellect by the action of another intellect (or by the reflect action of your own intellect). In other words, in the act of knowing itself your intellect does not become identical to itself (if it became something, it became clay
).
I have to use comparisons (analogies), because the reality being described is non-physical. (The clay analogy, of course, was just an illustration to help someone understand a little better.)
Note that we
do have awareness of our intellectual acts. When I recognize someone or something, I am also aware—in the very same act—that I am doing an act of recognition.
This is very different from our sensory faculties. Our eyes are not conscious of seeing; nor our ears of hearing. Some
other faculty—namely, our intellect—is responsible for being aware of those actions.
We are self-aware; the Medievals called this property the
reditio completa. This is one the of the most important reasons for thinking that we are not only corporeal, but also
immaterial—i.e., spiritual—beings.
If the objects of geometry are idealizations of reality (and I don’t necessarily reject that), it means that they are not produced by the action of reality upon our mind.
Why not, exactly? What are the models we use to make the idealization?
Besides, it is not possible to show that the squares and circles that we imagine are the Euclidean squares and circles.
Are you referring to the non-Euclidean geometries?
We don’t really need to “show” that the figures we imagine are Euclidean; Euclidean geometry is simply the easiest and most natural abstraction of such figures.
What we know about the possibilities of our imagination does not support the alleged assumption of the geometrical forms by it. So, what could be the origin of those mental entities? If they are not impressed on our intellect by the “real” squares and circles, are they a reminiscence of our stay in the topos uranus?
Whatever kind of geometric model you use (and naturally, I grant that geometry entails a choice of models, depending on the application), the ultimate basis for it is still the physical extension of real objects: square-shaped objects are the model and basis for the geometric concept of squares; circle-shaped objects for circles, and so on.
Then, in that case, the intellect is not “malleable” because it is spiritual, but because it does not know. However, there are many things which do not know, and I tend to think that you would not say that they are “malleable” (your “sub-human creatures are non-malleable” induces me to think that). You are missing something, Imelahn…
Look at it this way: spiritual creatures (angels and men) are intermediate in nobility between animals and God (of course, God is infinitely greater than even the greatest angel).
Sub-human animals are
incapable of taking on the forms of other substance, because their souls are not sufficiently powerful.
Men and angels
are powerful enough take on the forms of other substances. However, something has to
act on their intellects in order for that to happen. (In the case of man—at least here on earth—it is the forms of material things.)
God, however, is infinitely powerful. He does not need anything or anyone to put His intellect (which is identical with Himself) into act.
