How do we come to know things?

[lmelahn]

If you think about the relation “slave-master” carefully, you might realize at least that it is not one of those “directly available” relations that Imelahn mentions (though it seems that it was directly available for Aristotle). As Aristotle implies, you need the definition of the words to “correctly see” the relation. As a greek aristocrat, Aristotle was able to immediately recognize among two humans who was a master and who was a slave (he was knowledgeable about the words and their common uses). Their natures impressed his mind without any obstacle. On my side, I am quite unable to perform such identification: Christian doctrine prevents reality from impressing such abominable “truth” on my mind. Language establishes the way we see the world. Language is a vision of the world. Once you are “informed” by your mother language, you cannot avoid so easily “seeing” relations as part of the “real order”.

Note that some relations are understood by the very notions or concepts used. “Master” and “slave” is one of these. Once we understand what a “slave” is (even if we have never met one, or seen slavery in action), then we understand that in order for someone to be a “slave,” he must be subjugated by a “master,” and vice-versa.

We also need to note that some relations have a basis in the nature of the things in question: for example, the relations of fatherhood and sonship, and the relations of husband and wife, have a basis in human nature. Slavery and master-hood, of course, do not; they are, in fact, contrary to human nature. Unfortunately, they exist as real relations, even nowadays (since there are, in fact, depraved people who enslave others even today).

But then, isn’t there any objective foundation (I prefer to say “reference”) for our relations? I have said many times in this thread that interactions and the “elements” of those interactions are real, and we mentally imitate them. As an approximation to what Imelahn says, some interactions are certainly less complex than others, and for them our imitative labor becomes easier, and a common agreement between us is easier too in those cases. But we are not infallible: both the physician and the engine specialist make mistakes, just as we all do. Interactions and the “elements of interactions” do not depend on our caprice. So, they are the common reference for each one of us. But complex interactions challenge us, and we don’t find easy and unique ways to imitate them, so agreement is not straightforward.

I never affirmed that knowing a real relation is always an easy task… Just that there is something there, outside our minds, that needs to be discovered.

Besides, the elements of interaction have multiple possibilities. For example, an ambitious man can subjugate others and make them his slaves, and, in association with others, he can create a complex organization which, in time, will make slavery to become “natural” to people, both for “masters” as for “slaves”. Certain social mechanisms will be developed (interactions), and language will develop to create the relations which imitate those real interactions… But people like St. Francis can make another possibility to become real as well: son of a rich merchant, he can decide to become the poorest among the poor, and dedicate his life to the service of his brothers, and create a society of men willing to follow his example… However, ambition is an indeclinable mode of human interaction, and…

Hm. I think that human passions (of which ambition is one) are much richer realities than simply interactions. Things like the horrors of slavery involve not just “elements” (in this case, men), but also human habits, human actions, the reality of original sin, and (in all this) the action of grace (none of which can be reduced to mere interactions).

You can see two bodies (A and B, you know) at a distance. You compare certain interaction between you and body A with the same interaction between you and body B. Based on this and on the knowledge of words, you say: A is “bigger” than B. But then you observe better and realize that you would need to walk more to reach body B than to reach body A; and remembering that this has an influence on the way you perceive bodies (other interactions intervene here), you doubt: B might be as big as A, or even bigger. Then, you work to put both bodies close to each other and you see them again: You notice now that the interaction between you and A is very similar to the interaction between you an B, so you say: “they are practically the same size”. You can resort on other advanced techniques (interactions) to do the comparison (for example, you can use an instrument that could give you two digital signals as a result of the successive interaction between the instrument and A, and the interaction between B and the instrument. Then you only would have to compare the digital signals. Sometimes, a greater complexity makes things easier). If this relation of sizes of bodies A and B inheres in them and is impressed on your mind, why do you have to work so hard, and why is it that you can make mistakes?

But the size of each body, does it not exist outside my mind before I measure it?

 

[lmelahn]

So all of this pretty much agrees with Aquinas’ statement that relations are not in the knowable, but only in knowledge. I will have to take a closer look at what Imelahn has said in previous quotes to see how I can square what Aquinas said with what he is saying. Perhaps there is no real contradiction.

In Aquinas, relations can be either real or “of reason” (purely mental or conceptual).

We have been talking about real relations, and the examples should be now be familiar: fatherhood and sonship, husband(hood) and wife(hood), right and left, planet and satellite, and so on. They exist whenever one substance is referred to another by some condition in reality.

There are, however, relations that we make up because our minds are unable to do otherwise. We can, through the act of composition/division (judgment) come to realize that these “relations” to not exist in reality, but only in our minds.

For example, take the relation of identity or “sameness,” like when I say, “I am the same as myself.” In reality, “I” and “myself” are not distinct; it is simply I. However, in order to make a judgment such as “I am the same as myself,” I have to mentally distinguish “I” from “myself.” My mind functions in such a way that I have to insert a concept as “subject” and a different concept (referring to the same reality!) as the “predicate.”

That is what Aquinas meant when he said that some relations are only in the mind.

 

[utunumsint]

For the most basic forms of mathematics (arithmetic and geometry), our minds conform in essence to the accident of quantity. It is, however, abstracted and idealized. We are basically considering quantity by itself, without taking the particular characteristics of substances into account. In geometry, for example, we examine squares in their pure “squareness,” without considering that real-life square objects have thickness, irregularities, and so on.

The more arcane kinds of mathematics are based on mental constructs that derive ultimately (but more remotely) from the quantity that we observe in experience.

Strictly speaking, we only “become” (take on the form of) something real and concrete. For material things, doing so is easy for us, because it is the natural tendency of our intellect.

However, when we try to grapple with realities that go beyond the immediate physical world—like when we consider our own spiritual souls, or creatures like angels, and especially when we consider God—then we have a harder time. We have to make careful use of our ability to reason, and especially of our ability to make analogies.

I think I read in a book somewhere that the knowledge we can derive of immaterial realities is meager, but it is amazing how much Aquinas can build on that foundation.

So what about abstract concepts? They are abstractions that we derive from the concrete realities we encounter. We have direct experience of just people, and from these we learn what justice is. Similarly with the other concepts. (We learn about goodness from the fact that we have appetencies; about truth because we observe that what we have in our intellects corresponds, and ought to correspond, with reality; and so on.)

To put it another way, there is no such thing as “justice” (or “goodness” or “truth”…) all by itself. In our experience, there are just people, good people (and good actions, and good food, and all sorts of good things), and true knowledge. By a difficult and involved process (philosophically speaking, here), we can come to know that all of these perfections come from a single source; namely, God, who is Justice, Goodness, and Truth Itself. But our first contact with these notions is always taken from our direct experience.

Interesting. Aristotle and Aquinas really emphasize the concrete.

Much to think on.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

In Aquinas, relations can be either real or “of reason” (purely mental or conceptual).

We have been talking about real relations, and the examples should be now be familiar: fatherhood and sonship, husband(hood) and wife(hood), right and left, planet and satellite, and so on. They exist whenever one substance is referred to another by some condition in reality.

There are, however, relations that we make up because our minds are unable to do otherwise. We can, through the act of composition/division (judgment) come to realize that these “relations” to not exist in reality, but only in our minds.

For example, take the relation of identity or “sameness,” like when I say, “I am the same as myself.” In reality, “I” and “myself” are not distinct; it is simply I. However, in order to make a judgment such as “I am the same as myself,” I have to mentally distinguish “I” from “myself.” My mind functions in such a way that I have to insert a concept as “subject” and a different concept (referring to the same reality!) as the “predicate.”

That is what Aquinas meant when he said that some relations are only in the mind.

Yes. That makes sense. But what does Aquinas mean here in the SCG book 2? forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=12945990&postcount=498

Yet in no case is a thing denominated from a relation as existing outside it, but only as inhering in it. For example: a man is not denominated father except from the fatherhood which is in him. Therefore, the relations by which God is referred to creatures cannot possibly be realities outside Him.

I think he means this only with regard to “real” relations, as you mentioned, those that are grounded in natures.

God bless,
Ut

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I thought this was an interesting point when you raised it the other day, and since I’m posting…

Suppose we are not designed to compare sizes, and have no circuitry in our heads by which to make accurate size comparisons. Then it seems reasonable to conclude we will make more mistakes than if we were so equipped. In similar fashion, we are definitely not designed to do arithmetic, since computers are much faster and more accurate.

Let’s generalize that, and ask hypothetically, what if we’re not designed? If we are not designed, do our genes force us all to see the world as Aristotle sees it? If so, then how did his very tidy scheme get into our genes? If not, then are all children in all cultures compelled to learn to see the world his way?

(remembering of course the ban on debating the e word)

I am sorry, Inocente, but I am not inclined to work with this kind of hypothesis. However…

The mistakes I was referring to are similar to this: Descartes thought that the operation of our digestive system was based on the heat and the dissolving ability of our blood, and that the nutritious juices extracted from the food during the digestion were transformed into blood through a repeated distillation process that occurs when they pass through our heart so many times during the day. He knew about distillation processes, certain chemical reactions, filtration and so on, and he tended to understand our body as a machine. This could have been a powerful model to certain extent, but simultaneously it was obviously weak.

There is always more than one way to explain phenomena; and depending on the tradition to which we belong it will be easier or harder for us to assimilate (or be assimilated by) one or another. It depends on such traditions even the questions that we pose; that is to say, the questions that make sense to us. In Aristotle’s times and intellectual circles it made a lot of sense asking oneself how is it that change in general is possible; but this is not a universal question. This is not, for example, the kind of questions that Kierkegaard will ask himself. So, no, we are not compelled to learn to see the world as Aristotle saw it. The important thing, in my opinion, would be to identify those questions which are really fundamental to us and seek the tradition that match them, so that we could develop it in the light that our present life brings.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

We don’t need analogy to know those things provided directly by experience. This experience is, rather, the raw material for our analogies …]

Imelahn, yesterday my wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. So, I dedicated all my thoughts and my free time to her. Please, bless us.

I can see that besides the question that I left unanswered in the past, I have now lots of homework, which is good, but will take me certain time to do.

Regards
JuanFlorencio

 

[lmelahn]

The passage from , chapter 12, book 2Summa Contra Gentiles is worth a commentary:

[3] It was shown in Book I, moreover, that God is the first measure of all things. Hence, He stands in relation to other beings as the knowable to our knowledge, which is measured by the knowable; for “opinion or speech is true or false according as a thing is or is not, as Aristotle says in the Categories [V]. But, although a thing is said to be knowable in relation to knowledge, the relation is not really in the knowable, but only in the knowledge. Thus, as Aristotle observes in Metaphysics v, the knowable is so called relatively, “not because it is itself related, but because something else is related to it.” Therefore the relations in question have no real being in God.

This is an example of what Aquinas calls a “relation of reason.” (This is among the trickier aspects of St. Thomas’ thought, so don’t worry if it takes a couple of tries to understand it.)

(Aquinas can be pretty succinct and assumes you know all the background…)

So, “relation” is one of the ten modes of being that correspond to each of the categories. It consists in the reference that one substance has with respect to another. (Hence, in created substance, it is the mode of being with the least consistency.) When we refer to “relation” in this way, we mean “real” relations, like fatherhood and sonship. By the very fact of being the son of such-and-such-a-man, the son has an inherent and (in this case) indelible reference to his father. (And vice versa.)

Our intellects are made to understand things in terms of (real!) relations. When I affirm that so-and-so is a son, I am implicitly affirming that he has a father. When I say this is my “left” hand, it is in relation to my “right” hand (or, if I had an amputated limb or something, at least the right-hand side of my body).

This tendency to associate things in relations undoubtedly stems from our intellect’s ability to compose and divide (make judgments): we are constantly relating the subject to the predicate.

(And here, I am granting that JuanFlorencio is half right. A judgment has something to do with a relation. The relation, however, is generally real, not in our minds. We discover it; we don’t make it up.)

A property of real relations is that, for the most part, they come in pairs: husband and wife, co-worker and co-worker, left and right. In other words, when one substance refers to another, usually the latter refers back to the former as well.

Sometimes, however, we have to construct a relation that is purely mental, in order to satisfy our intellect’s necessity for a subject and a predicate: I gave the example of identity. We make use of this kind of “relation of reason” when we affirm tautologies: “a rose is a rose” (of Gertrude Stein fame). The former rose (really, the species of “rose”) is not really different from the latter rose; but we treat each “rose” as if it were something distinct, and then affirm that it is, in reality, the same.

Here, St. Thomas is talking about a different type of relation of reason: a kind in which there are two substances involved, but only one of the substances possesses a real relation. We naturally speak of the other as if it also possessed a relation to the former (because of our mind’s indefatigable habit of thinking in pairs of mutual relations), but in fact the latter has no such relation.

I think this is impossible to understand without an example. What is the relation established, for example, between the person who knows something, and the thing that is known?

The person who does the knowing clearly undergoes an interior change in his soul when he does his act of knowing. Hence, when I apprehend (say) an orange and affirm its existence (by a judgment), a real relation is established in me, that refers me to the orange.

However, the orange is unchanged by my act of knowledge. Hence, no (real) relation is established that refers the orange to me.

Nevertheless, we speak about the knower (that’s me) and the thing known (the orange), which is the language of relation. Hence being a knower is a real relation—it refers me to the orange. However being a thing known is a “relation of reason,” since “being known” changes nothing in the orange.

In reality, Aquinas’ point in this passage is to show that our relationship with God bears a similarity with our relationship to the orange (albeit for a very different reason). By the fact of being created, we have a real relation that refers us to God. On the other hand, God is completely unchanged by the act of creating us, and so we cannot speak, technically speaking, of a “real relation”*that refers God to His creature. When “being the Creator” is understood as a relation, it is actually a “relation of reason.” That makes sense, because God cannot have accidents, as we do, nor is He changed in any way by creating us.

 

[lmelahn]

Yes. That makes sense. But what does Aquinas mean here in the SCG book 2? forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=12945990&postcount=498

I think he means this only with regard to “real” relations, as you mentioned, those that are grounded in natures.

God bless,
Ut

I mentioned in a previous post that God does not strictly speaking have a relation that refers Him to His creatures (because that would imply that God changes each time He creates a new creature).

(That does not mean that God does not care about us, by the way, just that His care for us is already in act; it does not need to be actuated by the presence of His creatures.)

Let’s look at number 3:

[3] Moreover, there are two ways in which a thing is predicated denominatively: first, from something external to it; as from place a person is said to be somewhere; from time, some-when; second, from something present in it; as white from whiteness. Yet in no case is a thing denominated from a relation as existing outside it, but only as inhering in it. For example: a man is not denominated father except from the fatherhood which is in him. Therefore, the relations by which God is referred to creatures cannot possibly be realities outside Him.

All that he means is that when we attribute a relation to some substance, that relation is inherent in the substance. When I say, “That man is my father,” I imply that the man possesses the relation of “fatherhood” with respect to me. The “fatherhood” of my father is not something outside my father, but intrinsic to him. That is really all Aquinas is saying here.

(I depends on what you mean by “grounded in nature.” Real relations are inherent in a substance. They may or may not be “good” for that nature. In previous posts, we spoke about the master-slave relationship. That consists in two real, but most unfortunate, relations.)

Aquinas goes on in number 4 to say what I mentioned above: there are no relations inherent in God as accidents. We attribute such relations to Him, but they are strictly speaking relations of reason.

(This is important, because God does have real relations: however, they are subsistent, and none other than the Persons themselves. But that is Trinitarian theology—subject for a different forum .)

 

[utunumsint]

I mentioned in a previous post that God does not strictly speaking have a relation that refers Him to His creatures (because that would imply that God changes each time He creates a new creature).

(That does not mean that God does not care about us, by the way, just that His care for us is already in act; it does not need to be actuated by the presence of His creatures.)

Right. Understood.

Let’s look at number 3:

All that he means is that when we attribute a relation to some substance, that relation is inherent in the substance. When I say, “That man is my father,” I imply that the man possesses the relation of “fatherhood” with respect to me. The “fatherhood” of my father is not something outside my father, but intrinsic to him. That is really all Aquinas is saying here.

(I depends on what you mean by “grounded in nature.” Real relations are inherent in a substance. They may or may not be “good” for that nature. In previous posts, we spoke about the master-slave relationship. That consists in two real, but most unfortunate, relations.)

I would have been happier with this definition of relation if real relations were relegated to just biologically real relation. Fatherhood can be reduced to both personal (spiritual) and biological relations (genetics and so on), whereas the master slave relation seems purely personal. There is no grounding in biology for this one.

But I see what you are saying. Maybe I can have my cake and eat it too though. Perhaps the slave master relationship is a perversion of a real biologically based relation, such as Father/Son, Mother/daughter, or sibling/sibling relationship. In the master slave relationship, we have perhaps an instance of Cain saying to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” So here we look at the relation as a privation of the real relation that ought to exist between the master and slave.

Of course, I can already tell this is probably not practical. There are other legitimate relations that clearly have no basis in biology. For example, shop keeper/client, anyone who provides a service/client, predator/prey, landowner/tenant, and so on. Still, I find it hard to see how these inhere in a substance since they are basically social constructs (or what I have called personal or spiritual). Perhaps I am betraying a biological reductivism here though and I need to broaden my defition of what “real” means, such that it includes this personal or spiritual element.

Aquinas goes on in number 4 to say what I mentioned above: there are no relations inherent in God as accidents. We attribute such relations to Him, but they are strictly speaking relations of reason.

(This is important, because God does have real relations: however, they are subsistent, and none other than the Persons themselves. But that is Trinitarian theology—subject for a different forum .)

Right. Makes sense. That is one of the things I admire in Aquinas. Everything is so tightly bound together.

God bless,
Ut

 

[inocente]

I am sorry, Inocente, but I am not inclined to work with this kind of hypothesis. However…

The mistakes I was referring to are similar to this: Descartes thought that the operation of our digestive system was based on the heat and the dissolving ability of our blood, and that the nutritious juices extracted from the food during the digestion were transformed into blood through a repeated distillation process that occurs when they pass through our heart so many times during the day. He knew about distillation processes, certain chemical reactions, filtration and so on, and he tended to understand our body as a machine. This could have been a powerful model to certain extent, but simultaneously it was obviously weak.

There is always more than one way to explain phenomena; and depending on the tradition to which we belong it will be easier or harder for us to assimilate (or be assimilated by) one or another. It depends on such traditions even the questions that we pose; that is to say, the questions that make sense to us. In Aristotle’s times and intellectual circles it made a lot of sense asking oneself how is it that change in general is possible; but this is not a universal question. This is not, for example, the kind of questions that Kierkegaard will ask himself. So, no, we are not compelled to learn to see the world as Aristotle saw it. The important thing, in my opinion, would be to identify those questions which are really fundamental to us and seek the tradition that match them, so that we could develop it in the light that our present life brings.

I’m not sure how Descartes fits with what you said originally (“If this relation of sizes of bodies A and B inheres in them and is impressed on your mind, why do you have to work so hard, and why is it that you can make mistakes?”), but his explanation of digestion was wrong. It was a reasonable guess, but still wrong.

There are often alternative valid explanations for something, depending on a chosen starting point. But all explanations about the world are guesses, and some guesses are later proved wrong, yet some people hang on to them anyway. It can be hard to admit that all those books in all those libraries, all those past generations, could be wrong. And if someone is happier sticking with well-loved falsehoods, there’s no killer argument that they would be better off without them. But I think we should stop short of suggesting that truth is in the eyes of the beholder.

But I’ll take you as confirming that Aristotle thinks we are intelligently designed, since that’s the only way his tidy categories could exist, and that this was the source of my cognitive dissonance.

Best wishes on your anniversary.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I’m not sure how Descartes fits with what you said originally (“If this relation of sizes of bodies A and B inheres in them and is impressed on your mind, why do you have to work so hard, and why is it that you can make mistakes?”), but his explanation of digestion was wrong. It was a reasonable guess, but still wrong.

There are often alternative valid explanations for something, depending on a chosen starting point. But all explanations about the world are guesses, and some guesses are later proved wrong, yet some people hang on to them anyway. It can be hard to admit that all those books in all those libraries, all those past generations, could be wrong. And if someone is happier sticking with well-loved falsehoods, there’s no killer argument that they would be better off without them. But I think we should stop short of suggesting that truth is in the eyes of the beholder.

But I’ll take you as confirming that Aristotle thinks we are intelligently designed, since that’s the only way his tidy categories could exist, and that this was the source of my cognitive dissonance.

Best wishes on your anniversary.

Thank you, Inocente!

Though Descartes never said that reality impresses itself onto our mind (so, we have to work hard), he believed that his descriptions were not just reasonable guesses, but the truth, and that they offered a kind of mathematical evidence. Bottom line, this is equivalent to say that reality can express itself through us, because mathematics (the mathematics to which we can have full access) is the foundation of reality. The only condition that we must fulfill is that we must follow his methods with discipline, because (he says) the origin of error is the weakness of our will. Descartes was peculiarly hard to be convinced of an error, but supposing that with additional information he could have realized that he was wrong, it would have been very difficult for him to explain that fact.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

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.)

Let’s suppose that you have tasted sodium chloride (direct experience), and someone asks you “how does it taste like?”. “I don’t know”, you respond (because you have not tasted any thing like it) . Then you taste potassium chloride (another direct experience), and if someone asks you again “how does it taste like?”, you have the answer now: “it tastes like sodium chloride!”.

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.

If you don’t realize that when you refer to your substance you are just using a model, it will always be kind of natural for you to separate your intelligence from yourself (but yourself still remaining intelligent) and say that it is only this part of you which changes.

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).

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.

Like in my example above, you can compare two interactions (the salty flavor) and say that one is like the other or different. That is how you know each one, by reference to the other. You can establish this kind of relations because you are conscious of your interactions.

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.

Well, we are aware of our intellectual acts as much as we are aware of our sensory interactions. The questions was not about being self-aware or not, but about the incommensurability between intellect and clay.

Why not, exactly? What are the models we use to make the idealization?

Because no body has such perfect shapes. It is not reality which impresses those geometrical shapes on our mind, it is we who idealize real shapes with our simplistic models.

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.

No, I am referring to imaginary shapes, whose alleged perfection we cannot show.

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.

Trying to imitate real objects we conceive simplistic shapes (which we usually call “perfect”, like the “perfect” or “ideal” gases).

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.

We had arrived to an association between the notion of form and organization. Something happened afterwards that you lost the association. I think that if you focused on the detailed and careful description of forms and the detailed and careful description of intentionality, you would do much better.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

That is true to some extent. I would put it more positively: some people are naturally more perceptive than others. However, we can also make an effort, with our wills, to learn more about things.

Yes, and that effort to learn (which is nothing but the repetition of acts) implies that we put something in the learning process: we establish relations, which becomes easier the more training you have.

Either way. Since we don’t have comprehensive knowledge of anything, we need each other’s help in order to increase our knowledge. Even if we had comprehensive knowledge of some things, we also learn a lot based on other people’s testimony (that is the basis for encyclopedias, atlases, textbooks, going to school…). We would “need to speak” to each other for that purpose at least.

We need to speak to each other because reality does not speak to us. For example, if you want to preserve aristotelian philosophy you need to teach it, because reality will not impress those doctrines on any mind. But if it were true that reality impresses itself on our mind, there would be no need for language. When we talk to each other we don’t speak about things really, but about the meanings they have for us, which is something that has come into the world with us.

 

[lmelahn]

Right. Understood.

I would have been happier with this definition of relation if real relations were relegated to just biologically real relation. Fatherhood can be reduced to both personal (spiritual) and biological relations (genetics and so on), whereas the master slave relation seems purely personal. There is no grounding in biology for this one.

Indeed, there is no grounding in nature (in the metaphysical sense) at all.

(Incidentally, I wouldn’t go down the road of separating the “biological” from the “spiritual” grounding. Maybe you didn’t mean it in that way, but I think it is important to emphasize this: we are one and whole, spiritual and corporeal all at once. I have a single relation with my father that is at once spiritual and biological.)

But I see what you are saying. Maybe I can have my cake and eat it too though. Perhaps the slave master relationship is a perversion of a real biologically based relation, such as Father/Son, Mother/daughter, or sibling/sibling relationship. In the master slave relationship, we have perhaps an instance of Cain saying to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” So here we look at the relation as a privation of the real relation that ought to exist between the master and slave.

You raise a good point. I suppose we could characterize the master-slave relationship as the privation of a correct relationship—i.e., of the brotherhood they really ought to have. I never thought of it that way, but I think that might actually be more correct. Similarly with the tyrant-subject relationship, and … any other bad relationship we can think of.

Of course, I can already tell this is probably not practical. There are other legitimate relations that clearly have no basis in biology. For example, shop keeper/client, anyone who provides a service/client, predator/prey, landowner/tenant, and so on. Still, I find it hard to see how these inhere in a substance since they are basically social constructs (or what I have called personal or spiritual). Perhaps I am betraying a biological reductivism here though and I need to broaden my defition of what “real” means, such that it includes this personal or spiritual element.

That is why I think we should stay away from separating the “biology” from the “spirit” in man. That is Cartesian dualism (named for René Descartes, who first proposed it in the modern era). In reality, these relationships are indeed grounded in human nature. We need food, for example, so we need to establish a relationship with the provider of food (the grocer or whoever it is). We need a place to live, so we need a relationship with the owner of the land (if it is not ourselves), and so on. Man is by nature a social being.

Of course, the predator/prey relationship is grounded in biology. A lion has to eat, and it has to eat meat, so… Obviously, man is not intended to be the target, because he is a spiritual creature.

Right. Makes sense. That is one of the things I admire in Aquinas. Everything is so tightly bound together.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Indeed, there is no grounding in nature (in the metaphysical sense) at all.

(Incidentally, I wouldn’t go down the road of separating the “biological” from the “spiritual” grounding. Maybe you didn’t mean it in that way, but I think it is important to emphasize this: we are one and whole, spiritual and corporeal all at once. I have a single relation with my father that is at once spiritual and biological.)

It is amazing how easy I slip into dualistic thinking. I have a body. I strip away my body, and the I still remains. But that is not the case. The I is also largely stripped away with the body. What remains is the intellect. But, without the grace of God, it is an intellect that is severely truncated in its functioning. It would be interesting to try and describe what such an experience would be like.

You raise a good point. I suppose we could characterize the master-slave relationship as the privation of a correct relationship—i.e., of the brotherhood they really ought to have. I never thought of it that way, but I think that might actually be more correct. Similarly with the tyrant-subject relationship, and … any other bad relationship we can think of.

Agreed.

That is why I think we should stay away from separating the “biology” from the “spirit” in man. That is Cartesian dualism (named for René Descartes, who first proposed it in the modern era). In reality, these relationships are indeed grounded in human nature. We need food, for example, so we need to establish a relationship with the provider of food (the grocer or whoever it is). We need a place to live, so we need a relationship with the owner of the land (if it is not ourselves), and so on. Man is by nature a social being.

Of course, the predator/prey relationship is grounded in biology. A lion has to eat, and it has to eat meat, so… Obviously, man is not intended to be the target, because he is a spiritual creature.

It is interesting how well this kind of thinking dovetails with the theory of evolution. Here the relations are grounded in human needs and wants. Of course, the temptation here is to go too far in that direction, denying any sort of immateriality.

Brief digression - I have been attempting to read Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age where he describes the descent over five hundred years or so from a state where it difficult and counter cultural to even consider there not being a God, to our current secular society (at least in the West) where the opposite is true. One has to make a great effort to understand the evidence for and believe in the existence of God. This situation seems similar to my default tendency to view things in a Cartesian/dualistic way. How strange that is… that the human mind is so malleable that self evident things to one generation are the next generation’s superstition…

God bless,
Ut

 

[lmelahn]

I didn’t have a chance to say so earlier, but congratulations to you and your wife on your anniversary.

Let’s suppose that you have tasted sodium chloride (direct experience), and someone asks you “how does it taste like?”. “I don’t know”, you respond (because you have not tasted any thing like it) . Then you taste potassium chloride (another direct experience), and if someone asks you again “how does it taste like?”, you have the answer now: “it tastes like sodium chloride!”.

OK. I concede the phenomenology here, but in order to make the last statement (undeniably a relation in your parlance), you had to apprehend both substances: sodium chloride and potassium chloride. (I.e., that stuff that just tasted tastes very nearly like that other stuff that I tasted earlier. The fact that we can identify each one as “stuff”*means that we have apprehended it as substance.)

Note that I have never tasted potassium chloride before (so far as I know), but I understood you perfectly, by analogy.

If you don’t realize that when you refer to your substance you are just using a model, it will always be kind of natural for you to separate your intelligence from yourself (but yourself still remaining intelligent) and say that it is only this part of you which changes.

That a part of me (a metaphysical part, not an integral part) remains the same and another part (distinct, but not separate) changes, whenever I know something, is pretty difficult to deny. Otherwise we would be unable to know anything. Going from no knowledge to some knowledge is a change from potency to act—i.e., a change—like any other. Yet if everything in me changes, then I couldn’t have the experience of subjective continuity (which I obviously do)—otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to write these lines to you in a coherent way.

Like in my example above, you can compare two interactions (the salty flavor) and say that one is like the other or different. That is how you know each one, by reference to the other. You can establish this kind of relations because you are conscious of your interactions.

One of my difficulties, again, is the attempt to reduce qualities (e.g., flavor) to interactions. Undoubtedly, for us to taste the flavor of salt (whether sodium or potassium), an interaction is required. But the interaction is produced by something real in the salt. A sign of this is that sugar (which looks very similar) has a very different flavor.

Well, we are aware of our intellectual acts as much as we are aware of our sensory interactions. The questions was not about being self-aware or not, but about the incommensurability between intellect and clay.

Oh dear, we might have to open the problem of analogy, here, which could bring us several days of conversation…

Briefly, the analogy is valid because it is an analogy of proportionality. Clay and intellect are clearly incommensurable. However, I can validly compare the proportion between intellect and form acquired (which are commensurable) and that between clay and geometric form acquired (also commensurable).

Because no body has such perfect shapes. It is not reality which impresses those geometrical shapes on our mind, it is we who idealize real shapes with our simplistic models.

(Sorry I meant a different kind of model.) What I meant was: the geometric figures—especially those of Euclidean geometry, which is the easiest kind of geometry—are grounded in the real shapes that we encounter in experience. We see round shapes in nature, we we are able to remove the imperfections mentally to make “circles.” But we would never have come up with circles at all (perhaps the circle, but certainly not geometry as such) without drawing from the real extensions of real objects in nature.

No, I am referring to imaginary shapes, whose alleged perfection we cannot show.

Trying to imitate real objects we conceive simplistic shapes (which we usually call “perfect”, like the “perfect” or “ideal” gases).

You are not realizing it, but these are examples of a type of abstraction: Aquinas’ abstractio formae.

We had arrived to an association between the notion of form and organization. Something happened afterwards that you lost the association. I think that if you focused on the detailed and careful description of forms and the detailed and careful description of intentionality, you would do much better.

Intrinsic order is produced by the form. I never said they are identical, just that a creature’s organization is a sign of a substantial form (or accidental form, if the unity is insufficient for it to be a single substance).

 

[lmelahn]

Yes, and that effort to learn (which is nothing but the repetition of acts) implies that we put something in the learning process: we establish relations, which becomes easier the more training you have.

If by “relations” we mean “judgments,” I could be in agreement here.

We need to speak to each other because reality does not speak to us. For example, if you want to preserve aristotelian philosophy you need to teach it, because reality will not impress those doctrines on any mind. But if it were true that reality impresses itself on our mind, there would be no need for language. When we talk to each other we don’t speak about things really, but about the meanings they have for us, which is something that has come into the world with us.

If reality did not speak to us, what would we talk about? Where is the raw material, so to speak?

And I am still not getting this one: if (as in Aristotle’s theory) we have only adequate, not comprehensive, knowledge of things, and people apprehend things at different levels and at different angles, wouldn’t language be necessary, in order for us to enrich our knowledge mutually? Wouldn’t that be precisely the role of teaching?

Just above, we talked about sodium and potassium chloride. As I said, I have never seen or tasted potassium chloride, that I can recall. (I think we used it in solution in some chemistry labs, but not the solid salt.) Yet I had no trouble understanding you.

You don’t think we were talking about sodium (and potassium) chloride? That we were instead talking about what each one meant to us? That is not how I perceived it, anyway. I was talking about the salts themselves and how they really interact with us.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Father and son, fellow business associates, brother and sister (and any other combination thereof), north and south, planet and satellite, trunk and branch, husband and wife, doctor and patient…

All of these represent pairs of mutual relations, in which, if you took away one of the parties, the relations would cease to exist.

Fantastic, those are great examples. Good!

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Now wait a minute: everyone gets confused now and then (especially as children) as to which hand is the left hand and which one is the right hand. That doesn’t mean that we don’t apprehend the relation itself: I have two hands; one is the mirror image of the other, or in any case, is on one side of my body with respect to the other.

Indeed, the fact that we confuse them so easily confirms that what we are apprehending here is a pair of mutual relations. It is rather easy for us to mix up the “endpoints” of the relations, but the relations are there for anyone to examine.

This involves complex spatial relations, which is a skill we have to learn. That is not what I was referring to. When I say we apprehend the relations between our hands, I mean the relationship between the living hands on your body, right now. We can mix up the words “left” and “right,” but we can’t mess up the fundamental relationship between the two hands. (The classmate in your example confirms this: he had to remind himself that his “right” hand was the hand he wrote with. He had the idea of right-hand and left-hand correct; he just couldn’t remember which term went with which notion—a very different problem, and a common one when dealing with relations that do not involve an obvious hierarchy.)

I substantially agree, but that does not take away the validity of the simple, direct knowledge we all have. The car won’t start. That is evident to everyone. Only the mechanic has the know-how to discover why it won’t start. He has the scientia necessary for that task. Similarly with the doctor: I have a persistent cough. The doctor can diagnose it, or even discover symptoms I hadn’t noticed, thanks to his know-how. But the original symptoms that made me go to the doctor are evident even to laymen.

I am still not getting my head around this: I have “projected” the relation of sonship I have with my father, based on the conventions of language?

Exactly. It seems incredible, right? However, actually it is very easy: You might remember that once you were a small boy, and one day you saw a guy. He or someone else told you that he was your “daddy”. Time went on, and listening to all those persons around you, you learnt that he was your “dad” and your “father” and I don’t know what else. There were certain interactions between you and him going on, and you learnt to associate them with “fatherhood”, because those were the words available to you. Was there a “fatherhood” relation inhering in the substance of that guy which acting on your own substance infallibly impressed the “fatherhood” relation on your mind? Of course not! Surely you know there are different conceptions about “fatherhood”; and it is not because the same “accidental form” impresses different conceptions on different minds, but because those different “minds” listened different things over the years and had different interactions with the “daddy” guy. It is not that complex.

I had another classmate who was taught as you say: “your right hand is the one with which you write”; but he was left handed. So, it was until the secondary school, “thanks” to the ridicule of his peers, that he learnt. Such is life; what can we do?

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I never affirmed that knowing a real relation is always an easy task… Just that there is something there, outside our minds, that needs to be discovered.

All this time I have understood that, according to you, reality impresses relations on our mind. Is there something easier for us than receiving an impression? But never mind, that is ok now!

The other thing that you still keep saying is that relations are there to be discovered. But you add, “sometimes it is not so easy”. Let’s suppose for the moment that those relations are “there”. Then, sometimes you have to make efforts to “discover” them (as if they were hidden somehow, right?). Do you grant, as St. Thomas did, that you can make mistakes, believing that there is a relation which actually is not “there” (in particular in those cases when it is difficult to discover it)?