How do we come to know things?

[lmelahn]

Don’t you remember that, according to you, it is reality which infallibly impresses these specific relations on your mind, and that each of those relations inheres in each of those hands? Why do you say now that, given certain conditions, it is easier for us to apprehend those mutual relations? Did you change your mind without telling me?

I haven’t changed my mind, but perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.

I said from the beginning that forms—whether substantial or accidental—are impressed on us when they are evident (that includes even some relations, like when I see, before my very eyes, both hands and their position relative to the body). The qualifier is important here. Lots of things require one to seek beyond what is strictly evident, and they are, obviously, more difficult to know.

The substance is what we know first and easiest, but some of the more obvious accidental forms come soon after (color, size, and even some spatial relations).

What does it mean, for right and left, to be, but weaker than before?

Right and left would exist even if couldn’t know them. (E.g., in people born with only a brain stem, or very young infants, etc.) So, they are no weaker than before.

 

[utunumsint]

It sounds good; but to see if you understand it in the same way I do, I would like to ask you: according to JuanFlorencio, how is it that we make mistakes?

You gave the example earlier on of the plumber who had a false understanding of the tool he was using. The tool did not impress itself on his mind. He developed a working theory that proved to be wrong about the tool. It is only after further investigation that you got to be more sophisticated in your understanding.

Let me know if this is correct.

But is there no cause and effect relationship between the thing sensed and the the operations of the intellect? Can you define what an interaction is? Is there no thing that is doing the interacting? There are certainly some metaphysical presuppositions here that need justification, no?

For example,

• Is my knowledge of an object I am touching a product of myself or of the thing I am touching?
• Is my knowledge of the tree I see purely a product of my own mind? Or is there a cause and effect relationship between the object I see and the knowledge it creates in my mind?
• And so on for the other senses.

At the very least, the knowledge that an object exists is caused in us by the object actually existing, no?

God bless,
Ut

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Juan, Im
I’m not sure why you are discussing the identification of left and right hands, but the kinetic sense of proprioception allows you to know where every part of the body is located with respect to every other part of the body. You can always tell your left from your right. Furthermore even if you removed the hands from the body the left can be distinguished from the right by placing them palm down and the thumb of the left hand will be on the right side and the converse is true for the right hand. Or have I missed something?

Nice discussion however; a level above the usual stuff found around here.

Yppop

The identification of the left and right hands is an example which, according to Imelahn, shows how relations inhere in substances and how reality impresses them on our mind. We are not discussing our spirituality, which Imelahn and me accept without reserves. On my side, I affirm that there are no relations in the “real order” (which is an expression that Imelahn has proposed and which has to be understood in opposition to the “mental order”); but that we, human beings, introduce them into the “real order”, because that is the way we have to know things.

Now, I think that what you say is a reasonable description of what happens: we follow certain procedures to distinguish one of those hands (living or non-living, healthy or unhealthy, attached or detached, made up of flesh or of wood…) from the other, or even to identify one of them alone; which means that reality does not impress inherent relations on our mind, but that we establish them as soon as our conscience of diverse interactions takes place.

There is a remarkable example (relations in God) in which St. Thomas rejects the reality of any relation which could be attributed to God on the basis that -according to Aristotle-, relations are accidents, and there cannot be any accident in God. According to St. Thomas, those relations must be “relations of reason”; however -he says-, they are not fallacious because they are the form in which we understand God. So, when we think of the relation “Creator-creature”, we must realize that it does not belong to the “real order”, but to the “mental order”. Without any ambiguity, I say that this is so in general, for any relation.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Windex cleans a window so that you do not know there is a window (if you do the cleaning well), such that you end up not knowing there is a window.
And, in fact, there is no window needing a painted reality removed; there is only the other and our apprehension of the other with our sensitive powers / faculties in preparation of presenting to our intellect an intelligible object, which it either understands or does not understand, knows as true or not, and therefore rejects and presents the will with an object of not good unknown-ness (with reference to any or all categories), whereupon the will moves the sensible powers to re-examine the image in light of the categories. In the conscious thought appears the sense of not understanding well enough and further examination of the sensed other, to present “more precise detail” (for lack of a better term) to the active intellect, where the spiritual cycle of knowing is repeated as often as needed until “I know” or “this is true” is achieved. And when achieved, there is phantasm and conscious material thought that is manifested / moved in the body of “I understand and know”, such that the body is at rest in knowing as the actualization in the of the soul knowing itself and the other.

I was asking you about the difference between aristotelian and kantian categories, because Kant too has a set of them. If you examine both doctrines, which set of categories are you going to use and what will be the foundation for your decision?

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I haven’t changed my mind, but perhaps I wasn’t clear enough.

I said from the beginning that forms—whether substantial or accidental—are impressed on us when they are evident (that includes even some relations, like when I see, before my very eyes, both hands and their position relative to the body). The qualifier is important here. Lots of things require one to seek beyond what is strictly evident, and they are, obviously, more difficult to know.

The substance is what we know first and easiest, but some of the more obvious accidental forms come soon after (color, size, and even some spatial relations).

Right and left would exist even if couldn’t know them. (E.g., in people born with only a brain stem, or very young infants, etc.) So, they are no weaker than before.

Impression and evidence… You remain ambiguous, Imelahn.

I have said that there are relations of different orders. We have talked, for example, about force, which is a relation based on acceleration and mass. Acceleration is a relation which is based on our conscience of movement and speed; speed is a relation which is based on a comparison of movements. So, in order to understand “force”, you must understand “acceleration” first, and so on. If you don’t understand an element of a relation or if you don’t have certain basic experience you will not be able to establish the relation. On the other hand, when you become used to certain relations, you become able to establish high order relations which have them as elements, and you do it so easily that you can say that such new relations are evident. However…, they are not impressed on your mind: you establish them.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Seeing both makes the mutual relations evident. That is how we first learn about them.

With respect to his own body, his left hand is still his left hand.

It happens to be on the “right” with respect to my body, in that case (in both cases, actually).

And vice versa, for the right hand.

You have then to think “with respect to his body” or “with respect to my body”, to make a decision about the left and the right (and if you think it more carefully you might realize that you need to assume something more). You will end saying that you simply learn that one hand is here and the other is there. Left and right are lost without a number of assumptions.

No, of course not. As long as the body is essentially intact, the relations among its parts remain intact.

What I was getting at is that, if someone has (say) an amputated arm—in that sense, not a fully healthy body—it might be more difficult for us to apprehend the relation of the remaining hand to the rest of the body. Seeing both hands at once, properly connected, makes the relations obvious and manifest.

I can assure you that with certain training you will become better and better at establishing those relations with people who have only one arm (not infallible, but better and better). I guess you think that the two hands have, so to say, twice the potency of only one hand to impress their inherent relations on your mind. But training might let you realize that such potency is not in the substance of the hands of your healthy neighbor, but on your mind.

No. But seeing a living, fully constituted body makes it much easier to apprehend the hands’ mutual relations, which is a different thing from learning the names of those relations.

I learned what “leftness” is, even before I knew it is called “left.” And I learned it by seeing extremities, such as (but not only) my left and right hands.

Imelahn, we had agreed already that we are not discussing names.

 

[yppop]

Yppop,

Imelahn
What you are talking about is an aspect of what Aquinas would call our interior sensation.

What I am talking about is neurobiology a subject that Aquinas is, through no fault of his own, woefully ignorant. Proprioception is mindbogglingly complex.

I am claiming that we human beings, who are spiritual (i.e., immaterial) beings, take the “data” given to us by our senses and form proper “concepts” or “notions” that are immaterial.

I agree with this emphatically although I prefer the word “percept” for the transformation of external sensory (name removed by moderator)uts. I prefer to associate the word “concept” with introspective mental forms, but I wouldn’t argue with your use of “concept” since I know what you mean.

Based on what you are saying here, I think I could go a step further: we form a concept of “left” and “right” (even if we don’t learn the names until later) by the very act of using our left and right hands. (At least once our cognitive apparatus is up and running.)

I contend that “left” and “right” is most deeply known through an innate sense.

I was also saying that “leftness” and “rightness” must exist in the real order: that they are real characteristics of our hands (and feet, or what have you). The very arrangement and shape of each hand is in reference to the other.

Those characteristics cannot, it seems to me, be reduced to interactions, because they exist whether our hands “act” on one another (or on our bodies) or not.

Much less can they be substances, obviously: the substances here are the hands.

It follows that they must be something else: Aristotle and Aquinas call them “relations” (ta pros ti, the “towards which”), and I think we can use that name.

I essentially agree with this but I would state it more scientifically. My comment was intended to dispel the “need to see” in order to differentiate right from left. In fact, left and right handedness is a property of an object. The scientific name for this property is “chirality” . An object is “chiral” if the object and its mirror image do not coincide. A human hand is chiral; a sphere is not.

And with that, I bow out of your interesting discussion with the hope that I might have added some small and interesting point.

Yppop

 

[lmelahn]

What I am talking about is neurobiology a subject that Aquinas is, through no fault of his own, woefully ignorant. Proprioception is mindbogglingly complex.

He did not know about neurobiology, but I think that neurobiology can easily be reconciled with the internal senses: what he called the common sense, imagination, memory, and the vis cogitativa.

(Note: for Aquinas “memory” means something different from our modern concept of memory. He means specifically the memory of past perception of noxiousness or benefit: like when we smell the odor of a food that once made us sick. The modern “memory” he would consider a part of the imagination. I think this is just a semantic difference, not really substantial.)

Put another way, we now know that it is the brain (or in any case the central nervous system) that performs these functions, and something about how they work. But I don’t think the notions themselves are invalid: Aquinas is just saying, in a general way, how sensory data need to be put together, before the intellect can make sense of them.

Several million firings of the rods and cones don’t make an image: something has to put those stimuli together into a coherent picture, and then something else, apparently, helps us to see sensory relationships (e.g., the permanence of certain objects, their successive movement in time, and so on).

In any case, what Aquinas may not have realized is that there is a kind of internal sensation of the body. That is very interesting.

I agree with this emphatically although I prefer the word “percept” for the transformation of external sensory (name removed by moderator)uts. I prefer to associate the word “concept” with introspective mental forms, but I wouldn’t argue with your use of “concept” since I know what you mean.

At least traditionally, “conceptum” refers to the immaterial product of apprehension. I agree that “perception” means knowledge on the sensory level: i.e., going from the disparate data of sensation to the sensory “image” that lets us recognize particular objects.

Aquinas would call your “percept” the species sensibilis or the phantasma, but I think it is essentially the same idea.

I contend that “left” and “right” is most deeply known through an innate sense.

I had not thought of that until you mentioned it, but that is very interesting. I will have to look into this.

I essentially agree with this but I would state it more scientifically. My comment was intended to dispel the “need to see” in order to differentiate right from left. In fact, left and right handedness is a property of an object. The scientific name for this property is “chirality” . An object is “chiral” if the object and its mirror image do not coincide. A human hand is chiral; a sphere is not.

OK. But I meant “see” broadly. I just meant “directly accessible through the senses” (not necessarily the external senses).

And with that, I bow out of your interesting discussion with the hope that I might have added some small and interesting point.

Yppop

Thank you!

 

[lmelahn]

Impression and evidence… You remain ambiguous, Imelahn.

I think the term “impression” is confusing us. It sounds too much like Hume.

All that I mean is, I cannot help but know what my senses present to me directly. When I look out my window at the (now infamous) pine tree, I cannot help but form a concept of it in my intellect and make the judgment that it exists outside my window.

In a similar way, when I see someone, and I see his two hands simultaneously (or if I perceive the chirality of my hands, or what have you), then I cannot help but see that the two hands are related to one another.

Likewise, when I look at the pine tree, I can see that the branches are connected to the trunk.

That is all I meant.

I have said that there are relations of different orders. We have talked, for example, about force, which is a relation based on acceleration and mass. Acceleration is a relation which is based on our conscience of movement and speed; speed is a relation which is based on a comparison of movements. So, in order to understand “force”, you must understand “acceleration” first, and so on. If you don’t understand an element of a relation or if you don’t have certain basic experience you will not be able to establish the relation. On the other hand, when you become used to certain relations, you become able to establish high order relations which have them as elements, and you do it so easily that you can say that such new relations are evident. However…, they are not impressed on your mind: you establish them.

But the arrangement of the hands, or the branches: is it real, or in my mind? And if in my mind, why does everyone “relate” them (establish a relation) in exactly the same way?

Isn’t the element (substance) the cause of the relation that we establish?

You have then to think “with respect to his body” or “with respect to my body”, to make a decision about the left and the right (and if you think it more carefully you might realize that you need to assume something more). You will end saying that you simply learn that one hand is here and the other is there. Left and right are lost without a number of assumptions.

I thought “with respect to his body” only upon further reflection. If I had seen him directly, I would first have understood the man, then (eventually) the arrangement of his hands.

I can assure you that with certain training you will become better and better at establishing those relations with people who have only one arm (not infallible, but better and better). I guess you think that the two hands have, so to say, twice the potency of only one hand to impress their inherent relations on your mind. But training might let you realize that such potency is not in the substance of the hands of your healthy neighbor, but on your mind.

Not exactly: if the left hand had no antagonist whatsoever (if it were neither positioned to one side, nor was it chiral), then it would not possess the relation of “leftness.”

There is no such thing as a brother without another brother or sister; we need two substances for a relation to exist.

Imelahn, we had agreed already that we are not discussing names.

I am, however, contending (and have contended since this came up) that we never mix up left and right as such; only what we call each one.

 

[John_Martin]

I was asking you about the difference between aristotelian and kantian categories, because Kant too has a set of them. If you examine both doctrines, which set of categories are you going to use and what will be the foundation for your decision?

Aristotle’s.
This is evident beginning with a baby coming from knowing little to nothing of anything relies on inductive learning whereas Kant presumes we think logically, deductively, and in fact his categories can only be applied after we have understood following those identified by Aristotle, which happen somewhat automatically due to our nature of knowing / wanting to know (which is intellect / will) in composite with a sensitive body indeterminate of what it might sense or move (with potential to determine what it senses, the intelligible object, automatically putting into play Aristotle’s categories - they simply happen as the sensed object is predicated. There is no need to realize one is acting out Aristotelian thought as a way of practicing it - it happens throughout life without fail)

Kant’s categories are for physically conscious consideration of observation, where the observed object has to fit possible alternatives, and when it fits it is “understood” (a baby knows no alternatives nor possibility). Aristotle’s categories are more akin to open ended curiosity about a particular aspect of the sensed thing, and Aristotle identified the centers of curiosity that happen in each person, giving them names as categories or predicaments. (a baby is curious with no idea about what curiosity is - yet we can say we know it is looking for solutions to the twelve categories - I think it is 12).

One could assert, “I use Kant’s categories”, yet in actuality, the learning and knowing and not learning yet and not knowing yet and movement to learning and knowing are happening with Aristotle’s categories - that is how it works.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

You gave the example earlier on of the plumber who had a false understanding of the tool he was using. The tool did not impress itself on his mind. He developed a working theory that proved to be wrong about the tool. It is only after further investigation that you got to be more sophisticated in your understanding.

Let me know if this is correct.

But is there no cause and effect relationship between the thing sensed and the the operations of the intellect? Can you define what an interaction is? Is there no thing that is doing the interacting? There are certainly some metaphysical presuppositions here that need justification, no?

For example,

• Is my knowledge of an object I am touching a product of myself or of the thing I am touching?
• Is my knowledge of the tree I see purely a product of my own mind? Or is there a cause and effect relationship between the object I see and the knowledge it creates in my mind?
• And so on for the other senses.

At the very least, the knowledge that an object exists is caused in us by the object actually existing, no?

God bless,
Ut

I am not pretending that this will be a complete answer to your post, Ut. I will come back later. It is just an example that came to my mind:

I read somewhere the story told by a missionary of a tribe in which people believed that the sun always appears in the morning on the same side because during the night it travels back there from its end position, taking advantage of the obscurity of the night. So to say, they saw the sun, the light, the obscurity, etcetera; but they did not establish the relations that we are used to establish between those “phenomena”. Now, all the tribe had the same belief, which is explained by the community life and the use of the same language. The people in the tribe shared this theoretical model to explain what they saw everyday. There are some interesting remarks in Aristotle which I relate to this example: he says that those beings who can hear are more intelligent, because they can be taught. He says also that if you see repeatedly the same phenomena you might realize something about it (I will need to look for his exact words). I imagine that if the missionary told them that the sun produces the light and, therefore, there would be no night if the sun travels back to its “starting” position, they would have laughed at him -with all right!-, because he was very naive. He obviously needed the wisdom of the tribe.

Can you derive some preliminary conclusions, Ut? I will come back tonight or tomorrow.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Aristotle’s.
This is evident beginning with a baby coming from knowing little to nothing of anything relies on inductive learning whereas Kant presumes we think logically, deductively, and in fact his categories can only be applied after we have understood following those identified by Aristotle, which happen somewhat automatically due to our nature of knowing / wanting to know (which is intellect / will) in composite with a sensitive body indeterminate of what it might sense or move (with potential to determine what it senses, the intelligible object, automatically putting into play Aristotle’s categories - they simply happen as the sensed object is predicated. There is no need to realize one is acting out Aristotelian thought as a way of practicing it - it happens throughout life without fail)

Kant’s categories are for physically conscious consideration of observation, where the observed object has to fit possible alternatives, and when it fits it is “understood” (a baby knows no alternatives nor possibility). Aristotle’s categories are more akin to open ended curiosity about a particular aspect of the sensed thing, and Aristotle identified the centers of curiosity that happen in each person, giving them names as categories or predicaments. (a baby is curious with no idea about what curiosity is - yet we can say we know it is looking for solutions to the twelve categories - I think it is 12).

One could assert, “I use Kant’s categories”, yet in actuality, the learning and knowing and not learning yet and not knowing yet and movement to learning and knowing are happening with Aristotle’s categories - that is how it works.

Where did you get that information from Kant, John?

 

[John_Martin]

Where did you get that information from Kant, John?

Although I cannot stand with him in his thought, Schopenhauer has done a fairly good job of critiquing Kant / explaining him (correcting him?).

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I think the term “impression” is confusing us. It sounds too much like Hume.

All that I mean is, I cannot help but know what my senses present to me directly. When I look out my window at the (now infamous) pine tree, I cannot help but form a concept of it in my intellect and make the judgment that it exists outside my window.

In a similar way, when I see someone, and I see his two hands simultaneously (or if I perceive the chirality of my hands, or what have you), then I cannot help but see that the two hands are related to one another.

Likewise, when I look at the pine tree, I can see that the branches are connected to the trunk.

That is all I meant.

Yes, I agree, the term “impression” is confusing. I regard it as a very unfortunate metaphor.

It happens to me too, as to anybody else, that I see relations everywhere. It is just that upon a careful examination I realize that I don’t discover them, but I establish them. The other day I proposed to you the example of one of my mother’s friends who, suddenly, could not find her way home. When my mother told me, I thought: “is there anything in our surroundings which tells us ‘hey, this is the way home!’?, what happened in the mind of this woman when everything made sense to her again the moment she saw one of her neighbors greeting her? How did she perceive her surroundings when she felt lost?”. There is no doubt in my mind that she still kept the ability to establish an amazing number of relations, but it would not have been difficult to show that she did not establish all the ones that she could, but only those that were relevant to her. This is actually what happens to us all: great portions of our surroundings remain “full of indifference” in front of us, until we become interested on something. Then, relations emerge. Things are there, they have their modes of interaction, they interact, but in the middle of interaction they are “fully indifferent” to each other, until we become interested.

…but it seems to me that your selection of the term “impression” is motivated by the aristotelian theory of the act and the potency applied to knowledge. We would be in potency to know something, and this something would be the agent which actualizes us. This is what I was thinking when I told you that if reality impressed relations on our mind we would not need language: To communicate to you my thoughts about an object it would suffice to show it to you. The thing would do the rest. Besides, if reality actualizes your mind you would never fail; but it seems that we fail more than animals, subjects as they are to their instincts.

But the arrangement of the hands, or the branches: is it real, or in my mind? And if in my mind, why does everyone “relate” them (establish a relation) in exactly the same way?

Isn’t the element (substance) the cause of the relation that we establish?

The objects are there, independently of any relation that we might establish, indifferent to them, with their modes of interaction and their interactions.

We really don’t establish exactly the same relations as others, but similar ones. Why are they similar? I have put before the example of those actors who imitate others. Each one of them will do their best. When we compare them to the “original”, we can observe similarities between their performances. Obviously, what makes this similarities possible is the presence of the original, which is being imitated by the actors.

Is the aristotelian god cause of the changes that beings suffer? According to Aristotle, he is, but not efficient; he is the final cause. Looking for all possible causes, Aristotle found four in total, as you know, and if it were evident to me that he found all of them and I were compelled to chose one, I would say that substances are final causes of relations (not material, nor formal, so much the less efficient). But I tend to think that substances are just the occasion of many of our relations.

I thought “with respect to his body” only upon further reflection. If I had seen him directly, I would first have understood the man, then (eventually) the arrangement of his hands.

Yes, eventually. So, do you need to consider the body to identify the left and the right hands or not?

Not exactly: if the left hand had no antagonist whatsoever (if it were neither positioned to one side, nor was it chiral), then it would not possess the relation of “leftness.”

There is no such thing as a brother without another brother or sister; we need two substances for a relation to exist.

We manage somewhat, Imelahn; haven’t you realized that? For example, we perform some imaginary semi-rotations and displacements upon the body of our neighbor until it is superimposed over our own body so that we can say if his remaining hand is the left or the right. I can do it.

I am, however, contending (and have contended since this came up) that we never mix up left and right as such; only what we call each one.

I insist that studying cognitive psychology would benefit you on this.

Let me see… Imagine an experiment like this: Some persons will appear in front of you, either facing you or in any other position. They will rise their left or right hand and will hide away, one after the other. You will need to imitate the movements of their hands as they appear in front of you. All this will take place in silence, so that the bad influence of names will be excluded. You will make mistakes, Imelahn.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

You gave the example earlier on of the plumber who had a false understanding of the tool he was using. The tool did not impress itself on his mind. He developed a working theory that proved to be wrong about the tool. It is only after further investigation that you got to be more sophisticated in your understanding.

Let me know if this is correct.

But is there no cause and effect relationship between the thing sensed and the the operations of the intellect? Can you define what an interaction is? Is there no thing that is doing the interacting? There are certainly some metaphysical presuppositions here that need justification, no?

For example,

• Is my knowledge of an object I am touching a product of myself or of the thing I am touching?
• Is my knowledge of the tree I see purely a product of my own mind? Or is there a cause and effect relationship between the object I see and the knowledge it creates in my mind?
• And so on for the other senses.

At the very least, the knowledge that an object exists is caused in us by the object actually existing, no?

God bless,
Ut

One question, and one answer for the moment, Ut:

The question first: …and… how was it that the plumber developed a wrong theory?

Now the answer to your first question:

No doubt there are interactions between objects and us. When you distinguish between senses and intellect you are theorizing already, and you should realize it; however, I will accompany you a few steps: objects definitely interact with our senses, but they cannot interact with our intellect. How could a material thing interact with our intellect, which is immaterial?

 

[lmelahn]

…]…but it seems to me that your selection of the term “impression” is motivated by the aristotelian theory of the act and the potency applied to knowledge. We would be in potency to know something, and this something would be the agent which actualizes us. This is what I was thinking when I told you that if reality impressed relations on our mind we would not need language: To communicate to you my thoughts about an object it would suffice to show it to you. The thing would do the rest. Besides, if reality actualizes your mind you would never fail; but it seems that we fail more than animals, subjects as they are to their instincts.

The intellect is certainly in potency with respect to the world. It is not so in exactly the same way that the prime matter is in potency with the substantial form, or the substance is in potency with its accidents, but there is an analogy with those realities.

If it were not so, the world would not transcend the intellect; it would be made up by us.

Do you understand what I say, when I mean that our knowledge of things is “adequate” but not “comprehensive”? I cannot possibly know every aspect about a substance, like my now infamous pine tree; that would be “comprehensive” knowledge of something, which only God enjoys.

However, I can have “adequate” knowledge. I have enough to be able to recognize that pine tree as the same one I have been seeing every day. Enough to be able to investigate further into the nature of that pine tree, if I wish to.

That is why your conclusion—that language would be unnecessary—is a non sequitur. Although reality is what reduces my intellect to act, my intellect only receives part of the picture, so to speak. (To put it in more technical language, my intellect is only reduced to act in part; it remains partly in potency with respect to the things it knows.)

Also, reality actuates my intellect through the direct contact that it has with my senses. Any type of knowledge that must go beyond that direct observation (which is the majority of our knowledge) requires reasoning.

Language is actually the external expression of reasoning, and that is why it is both necessary and possible, even though reality is what originally actuates our intellects.

In sum: reality actuates our intellect, but that actuation is not sufficient. We need to go further, and for that reason, we need both reason and language.

The objects are there, independently of any relation that we might establish, indifferent to them, with their modes of interaction and their interactions.

We really don’t establish exactly the same relations as others, but similar ones. Why are they similar? I have put before the example of those actors who imitate others. Each one of them will do their best. When we compare them to the “original”, we can observe similarities between their performances. Obviously, what makes this similarities possible is the presence of the original, which is being imitated by the actors.

I think my theory—of partial, but faithful actuation—accounts for that difference as well.

Is the aristotelian god cause of the changes that beings suffer? According to Aristotle, he is, but not efficient; he is the final cause. Looking for all possible causes, Aristotle found four in total, as you know, and if it were evident to me that he found all of them and I were compelled to chose one, I would say that substances are final causes of relations (not material, nor formal, so much the less efficient). But I tend to think that substances are just the occasion of many of our relations.

Not directly related, but there are new studies that suggest that Aristotle did not think that God exerts only final causality. Google the works of Enrico Berti. (I am not sure how many are translated in to English.)

Aristotle found four species of causes, not just four causes. Based on what you have told me, reality for you would be the extrinsic formal cause, or exemplary cause, of our (mental) relations (because we establish our relations in imitation of reality).

I agree that it is also a final cause, but then you would be falling into my trap : that means that our intellect tends to the reality it knows, a kind of reduction from potency to act.

Yes, eventually. So, do you need to consider the body to identify the left and the right hands or not?

In a different subject, certainly yes. (Apparently, and this is something I had not thought about, the proprioception allows us to do this in ourselves without explicitly considering the body.)

We manage somewhat, Imelahn; haven’t you realized that? For example, we perform some imaginary semi-rotations and displacements upon the body of our neighbor until it is superimposed over our own body so that we can say if his remaining hand is the left or the right. I can do it.

I insist that studying cognitive psychology would benefit you on this.

Let me see… Imagine an experiment like this: Some persons will appear in front of you, either facing you or in any other position. They will rise their left or right hand and will hide away, one after the other. You will need to imitate the movements of their hands as they appear in front of you. All this will take place in silence, so that the bad influence of names will be excluded. You will make mistakes, Imelahn.

I am open to learning something about cognitive psychology. However, what I am saying is a lot more simple than that. Forget the right and left hands for a moment. Just pull out a piece of paper. Look at the four corners. They are arranged in a certain way, right? Does the arrangement exist in reality, or not?

 

[John_Martin]

…

Is the aristotelian god cause of the changes that beings suffer? According to Aristotle, he is, but not efficient; he is the final cause. Looking for all possible causes, Aristotle found four in total, as you know, and if it were evident to me that he found all of them and I were compelled to chose one, I would say that substances are final causes of relations (not material, nor formal, so much the less efficient). But I tend to think that substances are just the occasion of many of our relations.

…

Just a note - if substances were the final cause of relations, then the substance would not happen or be until the relation were in act, thus ending in a satisfied substance.

Some would say I just disproved God if he is the final cause of all, and of us - that he could not exist until we are in act.
But he is not the final cause of us and of all in “stand-alone being” - he is the final cause of us and of all in union with him knowing in act what is conditional.

 

[inocente]

What I am talking about is neurobiology a subject that Aquinas is, through no fault of his own, woefully ignorant. Proprioception is mindbogglingly complex.

Put another way, we now know that it is the brain (or in any case the central nervous system) that performs these functions, and something about how they work. But I don’t think the notions themselves are invalid: Aquinas is just saying, in a general way, how sensory data need to be put together, before the intellect can make sense of them.

Several million firings of the rods and cones don’t make an image: something has to put those stimuli together into a coherent picture, and then something else, apparently, helps us to see sensory relationships (e.g., the permanence of certain objects, their successive movement in time, and so on).

I happened to look in on the thread, and thought you both might be interested in the work of the neuroscientist Sheila Nirenberg. She is trying to help the blind see by using a prosthetic device, which eventually will look like an ordinary pair of spectacles. Her device calculates the binary encoding normally sent by the eyes to the brain. The same technique can be used for hearing. It’s a wonderful piece of work, but interesting in this context because:

1. The code is nothing like the “picture” that we see in our mind, it seems loosely analogous to MP3 or MP4, where some data is deliberately lost to allow compression. Thus our perception of the real world is limited not only to the narrow range of frequencies we can sense, but also to patterns which the encoding algorithm deems worth retaining.
2. It is streamed, indicating that recognition probably occurs continuously in parallel, rather than in a sequence.

Nirenberg talk at TEDMED - ted.com/talks/sheila_nirenberg_a_prosthetic_eye_to_treat_blindness?language=en#

Her MacArthur Fellowship award video - youtube.com/watch?v=GDEbsrpnntY

 

[Richca]

Just a note - if substances were the final cause of relations, then the substance would not happen or be until the relation were in act, thus ending in a satisfied substance.

Some would say I just disproved God if he is the final cause of all, and of us - that he could not exist until we are in act.
But he is not the final cause of us and of all in “stand-alone being” - he is the final cause of us and of all in union with him knowing in act what is conditional.

The final cause is the first of causes. Although last in the order of execution, it is first in the order of intention for the end moves the agent to act.

 

[John_Martin]

The final cause is the first of causes. Although last in the order of execution, it is first in the order of intention for the end moves the agent to act.

The final cause, as intent in the agent, is not in being until the caused thing is in act, even though it might be an “idea” in the agent. Therefore the vision of “substance in act” as a final cause, causing relationship, is not “substance in act” until relationship is in act (if Juan is correct "that substances are final causes of relations ".) And then if the relationship were not in act, not real, any substance would be defective.