The Mind as the Place of Species: Universals, Truth and Understanding vs. Reason

Orientation #

He opens on “a kind of corollary” in 326 to what was shown in 324 and 325 (that reason is not a body), and twice says the object of reason will be treated “more clearly in the next reading, really starting in 329.” He also recalls the earlier treatment of the senses of “in” and of “how names are given.” Text-matching found a handout page (“The First Statement and King of Statements,” p. 3, about 10 minutes read) and a printed page (DHB Vol I, The First Philosophers, p. 103) in this audio; the transcript itself names only the De Anima commentary paragraphs. The previous class began De Anima III.4 on the intellect’s immateriality; the next continues with the limits of the sense/intellect analogy and the intellect’s proper object.

The class, in order #

1. The corollary in 326 and the word “species” (“the soul is a place of species speak well”) #

He reads: those who say the soul is the place of species speak well, except that not the whole soul but the intellectual part is such, and it is the species not in act but in potency. First he unpacks “species.”

• Greek eidos, Latin species, both with reference to the eye: “the look of the thing”; English usually says form (not “image”).
• In logic eidos/species signifies “a particular kind of one general kind of thing,” the general kind being the genus.
• Examples: democracy, oligarchy, monarchy are forms of government; forms of fiction (novel, short story, epic, drama); tragedy and comedy as forms of drama; Shakespeare has “at least four” forms of drama, one called romance in the classical sense (Greek or medieval romance; he distinguishes “mercy romances” and “love romances”).
• The form is universal, common to many: many democratic governments of the same kind (the fifty states, “with the exception of Nebraska,” which has one house).
• Species is the object of definition: to define you give what the thing is in general (genus, which begins the definition) and the differences separating it from other kinds (difference, which completes it). This ties back to the predicables studied in logic: genus, species, difference, property, accident.

2. Digression: the central question of philosophy (“Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are”) #

Point: Plato and Aristotle divide over this question, and Plato’s theory of forms follows from his answer.

• The question brings together the philosopher’s end (truth) with what he talks about: either the way things are (natural, political philosophy) or the way we know (logic).
• Two possible answers, yes and no. Plato implicitly answers yes, Aristotle no; through the whole history down to the 20th century more philosophers side with Plato.
• Why Plato’s answer attracts: our common understanding of truth as agreement or harmony of mind with things (“Berquist is standing now” is true; “Berquist is sitting now” false), so it seems that if the way we know is not the way things are, we lose that agreement.

3. Knowing in separation what does not exist in separation (“one can know in separation things that don’t exist in separation”) #

Point: Aristotle, in book II of Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics], showed the exception Plato missed.

• Senses: sugar is white and sweet; the eye knows whiteness without sweetness, taste knows sweetness without whiteness; neither is false. Falsity would come only in saying “this white thing is not sweet.”
• The man: students know him as philosopher, not grandfather; the hospital nurses “certified” him a grandfather but did not know he was a philosopher (Cecilia’s picture on his desk). Incomplete knowledge is not false knowledge; falsity comes in saying “he is nothing more than a philosopher” or “this philosopher is not a grandfather.”
• The universal: can I know what you all have in common (monks, students, men) leaving aside individual differences? Thomas is not part of the definition of student; Socrates is not part of the definition of man; if every man had to be put in, the definition could never be completed.
• Plato’s reasoning reconstructed: (1) Socrates showed we truly know through definitions; (2) through definitions we know the universal in separation from singulars; (3) when we know truly, the way we know is the way things are; so (4) the universal exists in separation from singulars: the world of universal forms, “man himself,” “dog himself.” He objects to the translation “Platonic ideas”; better “world of forms.” Aristotle reasons against it in Metaphysics books I, III and VII.
• Where does the universal exist in separation? In the mind. So 326 is right, made more precise: the understanding part is the place of species. Boethius: things are singular when sensed, universal when understood. The falsity would come “by trying to ram these two things together,” saying what is common exists outside the mind and outside you.

4. The order of knowing need not be the order of being (“we have to reason backwards”) #

Point: a second way the way we know may differ from the way things are without falsity.

• “I know you before I know your parents”; in reality the parents come first; false only if I concluded you came before your parents.
• Generally we know the effect before the cause (every “why” knows the effect, not yet the cause); false only if the effect were said to give rise to the cause.
• Sherlock Holmes to Watson: “we have to reason backwards” (aside: Chesterton’s biography says the Holmes stories are better than his own Father Brown [transcript: “Browning”]); like a movie played backwards, you can eventually figure out why they are fighting. The detective knowing there is a murder before knowing who did it is not false; false only if he thought the body responsible for the shooting.
• God comes in the last part of the last part of philosophy: the reverse of God’s knowledge, who by knowing himself knows all things.

5. From the universal to the immateriality of reason (“whatever is received in the continuous is received either here or there”) #

Point: Aristotle does not develop it here, but the fact that reason is the place of the universal is a further sign that it is not a body; Thomas makes it explicit elsewhere.

1. Two figures of exactly the same kind on the board are possible only because the surface, being continuous, has part outside of part: one here, one there. (Aside: when quantum theory could not pinpoint particles, they seemed to lose individuality; “you can’t say one’s here, one’s there.”)
2. Same in the sensible world: many window panes need enough glass; many metal chairs, enough metal; many Christmas-tree cookies, enough dough; wooden chairs, enough wood. “Enough” touches on continuous quantity; matter as quantified has part outside part and can be cut into many.
3. Matter subject to continuous quantity is what we mean by a body: matter with length, width and depth.
4. So whatever is received in the continuous is received here or there, in this dough or that wood: not as circle or square in general but as a singular square, an individual pane.
5. What is received in reason, above all in the form of a definition, is universal.
6. Therefore it is not received in the continuous, and reason is not a body; were it a body, what it received would be received as singular. Conclusion he draws: there is a connection between 324-325 (reason not a body because it can receive the natures of all bodily things) and 326 (reason the place of the universal, not Plato’s world of forms).

• Student: but sense receives the particular. Reply: there is a certain immateriality in sensing, but insofar as sense receives only the singular, it receives the way the continuous receives.

6. Anticipating 329: reason understands the continuous in an uncontinuous way (“what a line is”) #

Point: imagination imagines a line; reason understands what a line is, and understands it to be continuous but not as continuous.

• If what-it-is-to-be-a-line had a length (two feet, one foot), it would not fit all lines; an imagined triangle must be equilateral or isosceles or scalene, right-angled or not, so it cannot be all at once, ending “like that dummy thing Locke saying it’s all and none of these.”
• A second way from the continuous: the definition of square, “equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral,” has three parts (genus and differences), yet is not divisible forever, its parts do not meet at a common boundary, and it is neither line, surface nor body: so the definition is not continuous (recalled from earlier discussion).
• Why does reason understand the continuous uncontinuously: because of what is understood or because of what understands? Not because of what is understood (that is continuous), so because of what understands: reason itself is non-continuous. Contrast: the eye sees continuously; cover half the eye and I see half of you; part of you is seen with part of me. But in the definition “equilateral” determines how the four sides of the quadrilateral are, which it could not do if it lay outside “quadrilateral” like one part of a page outside another, which does not determine or make actual the other part.

7. End of 326: species in potency; “place” as a concrete word (“compares it to a blank tablet”) #

• Aristotle speaks of reason originally: it is all things “in ability”; the Greek dunaton (able) in 324, Latin intellectus possibilis, “the intellect that is able to receive”; later compared to a blank tablet on which nothing is written: letters already on the page would impede receiving; it must be “transparent, blank, able to receive all.”
• Greek topos: he keeps the concrete word “place” (the first sense of “in,” from which the other senses mentioned before are carried over); like saying anger disturbs “the eye of the soul.” Here “place” is not in its original sense (place of a body, which is a singular body) but “that in which the universal is.”

8. Student question: does “mind” include the will? (“The Greek word is nous”) #

• Yes, sometimes: Aristotle says the will is in the mind or in reason, meaning the rational part; sometimes “mind” names all parts of the soul without a bodily organ (the receptive understanding treated here, the will, the active understanding to come).
• Nous, Latin intellectus, English “intellect” or native “understanding”; “understanding” names sometimes the act, sometimes the ability (“man has an understanding”). Because man must think things out to understand a little, medievals called his an “overshadowed understanding” (intellectus obumbratus); so understanding (as ability) is divided into understanding for angels and God and a new name, reason, for man.

9. Two ways a common name stays with one of the things named (“Sometimes a name that is said of two things is kept by one of them”) #

Point: recalled from earlier; explains why man’s understanding is called reason.

• Way A: the common name belongs equally to both, but one has something noteworthy in addition; the unremarkable one keeps the name, the other gets a new one. “Animal” (living body with senses) is said equally of man and beast; the beast keeps “animal,” man gets a new name. Hence “man is an animal” is no insult, “you’re acting like an animal” is; his mother disliked his calling man an animal (“I don’t mean he’s just an animal”); Thomas: cum praecisione, “just an animal, nothing more.” Also: “poem” said of a sonnet and of the Iliad, the sonnet keeps “poem,” the Iliad is called an epic because its representation of human life is so much fuller; at the nursery, little things keep “plant,” the tree gets the new name.
• Way B: the common name is had fully by only one; the one that has it imperfectly gets the new name. Kitten is a cat, puppy is a dog, yet we divide cat against kitten; man against boy, woman against girl (“he’s just a boy,” excusing him). In Categories a disposition easily lost keeps the name disposition (a mood, changing in an hour); a firm disposition gets a new name, habit; vice and virtue are habits, so a habit is a disposition, and yet habit is divided against disposition. “Aristotle didn’t invent this”; language does it naturally.
• Application: Thomas says the angel has intellectus, man ratio. The angel’s mind is full to begin with, understands right away (aside: his son Marcus’s little boy asked why we can’t be born knowing everything; “you want to be an angel?”). Man naturally understands very little and must think, reason, struggle; Shakespeare’s “discourse,” going from one thing to another. Man is more able to think than to understand; reason is that ability to think. Yet reason is an understanding “in the same way you could speak of a kitten as a cat or a puppy as a dog.” This is Way B, not Way A.

His words #

• species / eidos: the look of a thing; in logic, a particular kind of one general kind; English “form”.
• genus: the general kind of thing; the name that begins the definition.
• difference: the kind of name that completes the definition.
• central question of philosophy: does truth require that the way we know be the way things are.
• Natural Hearing: [ed.: Aristotle's Physics].
• “world of forms”: his preferred rendering for the Platonic “ideas”.
• Boethius’ saying: things singular when sensed, universal when understood.
• the continuous: what has part outside of part; matter so quantified is what “body” means.
• ability: [ed.: potency]; dunaton, “able”; intellectus possibilis, “the intellect that is able to receive”.
• topos / place: kept concretely; here “that in which the universal is”.
• nous / intellectus / understanding: the act, or the ability to perform it.
• intellectus obumbratus: overshadowed understanding, the medieval name for man’s.
• reason: the new name for man’s imperfect ability to understand; the ability to think.
• cum praecisione: “just an animal, nothing more”.
• disposition vs. habit: easily lost vs. firm and hard to remove.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima, n. 326 (III.4): “the soul is the place of species … not the species in actuality but in potency.”
• Handout, “The First Statement and King of Statements,” p. 3 (text-matched, about 10 minutes); DHB Vol I, The First Philosophers, p. 103 (text-matched).

Mentioned

• Thomas, Commentary on De Anima, nn. 324, 325 (reason not a body; dunaton), 329 (object of reason, next reading).
• Aristotle, Natural Hearing [Physics] book II (knowing in separation).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics books I, III, VII (against the forms).
• Aristotle, Categories (disposition and habit).
• Aristotle, the blank tablet (De Anima, later, locus unstated).
• Boethius (singular when sensed, universal when understood; locus unstated).
• Locke on the general triangle; Sherlock Holmes; Chesterton’s biography; Shakespeare (“discourse”).

His questions #

• What is the English word for eidos or species? Form (not “image”), though the Greek and Latin refer to the look of a thing.
• Is the species or form something singular or universal? Universal, common to many, and the object of definition.
• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Two possible answers, yes and no; Plato yes, Aristotle no.
• Is the eye false in knowing white without sweetness? No; falsity only in saying this white thing is not sweet.
• Are you part of the definition of student? of man? No; the definition leaves out every individual.
• Where does the universal exist in separation from the singulars? In the mind; so the understanding part is the place of species.
• Am I false in knowing you before your parents, or the effect before the cause? No; false only if the order of knowing were made the order of being.
• Is whatever is received in the continuous received as universal or as singular? As singular, here or there; so reason, receiving the universal, is not a body.
• Why does reason understand the continuous in an uncontinuous way, because of what is understood or of what understands? Because of what understands; reason itself is non-continuous.
• Why does the dog keep the common name and the puppy get a new one? Because the puppy does not yet have fully what makes one a dog; likewise man’s “reason” against the angel’s “understanding”.