Intellect, Imagination, and the Two Acts of Reason: Nature vs. Reason and Will

Orientation #

He refers back to “the previous meeting, last class,” where a separate argument showed that reason is not a body because it receives in an immaterial way (prev. lecture). He says the will “is going to be touching upon in the next section of the De Anima,” and that the need for images “will be brought out later on in the chapter seven,” which he hopes to reach today (he does not). Text-matching reports about nine minutes read from the handout The Art About Statement, p. 7, presumably during the segment on statement, time and contradiction. The prior class treated the agent and possible intellect with act prior to potency; the next continues at 344 on grasping indivisibles and into chapter seven.

The class, in order #

1. The mind in act always understands; “this alone is immortal and eternal” (“sometimes understanding, sometimes not understanding”) #

Point: the text’s “not sometimes understanding, sometimes not” refers to the mind in act, not to the divine mind.

• Angels are created actually understanding themselves and many things, but perhaps not everything; God by nature actually understands everything. Our light is derived from “the light who enlightens every man” — hence the prayer before class to have our light strengthened by our angel’s; a priority in existence of the divine and angelic light over ours.
• We are able to understand before we actually understand; that is why learning is good (ability to act).
• Some took “not sometimes understanding” of the divine mind; Thomas: it is the mind in act as such, opposed to the mind in potency.
• 339: “when separated, this alone truly is” — separable from matter, immortal, eternal. The whole part of the soul that includes the undergoing and acting-upon understanding is the kind of soul that can exist apart from matter.
• A third power in the same part: the will (next section, after senses and reason).
• Aside, brain scientist: stimulating regions of the brain makes a patient remember, taste licorice, hear Mozart — no control — but no region was found where the man experienced choosing; the scientist concluded there is no part of the brain by which we choose. An experimental sign that the will, like understanding, is immaterial; hence God and angels can have will and understanding “a little more actual than ours” but no senses.

2. The passive mind and the brain objection (“the light bulb must be the organ”) #

Point: “without this it understands nothing” (340) hints that as long as the soul is in the body it does not understand without an image, and that hints at why the brain objection fails.

• The pathetikos / passive mind: the power receiving in a material organ, what Thomas calls particular reason or (with Augustine) the cogitative power — in the brain; it knows the singular directly, “under the universal,” and is destructible.
• Student objection (retold): a blow to the eye interferes with seeing, so the eye is the organ of sight; a blow to the brain, or alcohol, interferes with thinking, so the brain is the organ of thought.
• Reply by parallel cases: (a) windowless room lit by one bulb; smash the bulb and we cannot see each other — so the bulb is the organ of sight? (b) if you leave the room, or are blown up, I no longer see you — so you are the organ of my sight? Both absurd.
• Distinction: two ways to interfere with seeing — on the side of the organ (poking the eye, cutting the optic nerve) vs. on the side of the object (the bulb, your leaving). “A blow on the brain interferes with thinking” is true but does not show whether the brain is related as organ or on the side of the object; the objector syllogizes incorrectly.
• Conclusion: since a separate argument (last class) shows reason is not a body, a blow, alcohol, drugs, or a lesion must interfere on the side of the object.
• Image and object: the object of reason is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined, as the object of the eye is the colour of something outside me, or of taste the flavour. Removing the object stops seeing, yet seeing is not taking place in the object. So images are to reason as the exterior object is to sense. We do not think what a triangle is without imagining a triangle — because we are not understanding a Platonic form whose nature is to be by itself. If Plato’s world of forms existed you could understand without images; since not, you must imagine such a thing. “A matter of experience too.”
• Even after you have the definition of a square, thinking what a square is you imagine one, while understanding the what-it-is.
• Soul as form of a body is naturally turned toward the body; separated, it is actually understandable and will understand itself through itself, more like the angels — but they understand themselves first, while the soul is one of the last things we understand in this life (“we’ll come back to that”).

3. Chapter six: the three acts of reason (“three acts of reason that logic is directing”) #

Point: Thomas’s proemium to the Posterior Analytics takes its first two acts from this chapter and adds a third.

• His own names: (1) understanding what a thing is (Thomas: simple grasping) — e.g., to some extent I understand what a man, an animal, a stone is; (2) understanding the true or the false — “man is an animal,” “man is not a stone” (true); “man is a stone,” “man is not an animal” (false); Thomas calls it a kind of putting together. True and false are found in statements. (3) Reasoning: from at least two statements a third.
• Logic studies definition (for the first act), statement (for the second), reasoning.
• Aristotle does not treat reasoning here because he is concerned with the acts that are more natural; reasoning is an act of reason as reason, the first two can be acts of reason as a kind of nature.

4. Are acts one and two grasping and judging? (“three ways you might judge”) #

Student: are one and two the same as grasping and judging? Answer: be careful — the logic of the second act does not go beyond understanding the true or the false; judging which is true is another matter.

• Socrates is standing / is not standing: the logic of the second act says the two (same meaning of Socrates and standing) are contradictory — not both true, not both false, one true, one false — but which, I know by my senses.
• No odd number is even / some odd number is even: universal negative and particular affirmative contradict; which is true, you know by the definition — presupposing the first act.
• Interior angles of a triangle equal two right angles / do not: which is true you must reason out; not by sense, not by the terms.
• So three ways to judge: sense, definition, reasoning. You need no logic to use your senses; sometimes to define (Boethius: “obvious to the wise” — he, wise in geometry, knows every perfect number is composite only after learning both definitions); most of all in reasoning, where logic comes up most.
• Some things we naturally understand and naturally judge: what a whole and a part are, and that a whole is more than a part. Joke: whoever denies it gets part of his salary, part of his meal, part of his car — he will scream, showing he says what he does not think.
• Freedom of expression: I can say “I don’t exist,” “I’m a mouse,” “I’m a chair,” but not everything I can say can I think — as Aristotle points out in the fourth book of Wisdom.

5. Nature vs. reason and will: the moderns’ mistake (“three is two plus one”) #

Point: reason and will are not just natures but have nature in them; the moderns took the distinction as absolute.

• The moderns take nature/reason and nature/will as like dog vs. cat, two different animals. It is like two vs. three: is three a third one, or two plus one? Aristotle and Thomas: two plus one — three has two in it but is not just two. Likewise man vs. animal: man is an animal, not just an animal (his mother, disturbed by “man is an animal,” was satisfied by “I don’t mean he’s just an animal”). The beast is just an animal; man is much more, but has the animal.
• Hence reason naturally understands some things and the will naturally wills some things: to be happy, the good (though we may be mistaken about what is good).
• Consequences of the modern misunderstanding: reason knows nothing naturally, so everything must be reasoned to, with nothing to reason from — premises arbitrary; one can will anything, even as an end. “One of the greatest misunderstandings that you find in the moderns.”
• Student: so reason and will are violent? — Not violence, but something in addition to nature. Nature is determined to one; reason, in many things, can reason to opposites. The moderns would deny a cat is a dog plus something, as if three had no two in it.
• Sartre/existentialists: good in defending freedom of the will, but the defence denies the will is determined in any way — the opposite extreme from our wish to deny responsibility for our bad acts. Nature is determined to one of two opposites; in choosing I am not: I can drink this water or not (a dry mouth inclines but does not determine). But the will does not choose between happiness and misery — it is naturally determined to will happiness; choices may lead to either; choice is always of the means. Sartre: man wills nothing naturally, everything by choice.
• Mill, essay on liberty: reason is never determined to any statement; always open to discussion, keep an open mind. Then nothing is naturally known, every statement needs proof, no statement can be known true. “Very serious consequences.”
• Metaphysics IX: Aristotle distinguishes rational ability from natural ability — what is only a nature vs. what is reason or will (not just a nature, but having one).
• Shakespeare saw it: Aufidius in Coriolanus, reflecting on Coriolanus’s downfall, lists among possibilities that nature is “not being able to be more than one thing.”
• “This distinction… is extremely fundamental to all of our thinking”; a little mistake in the beginning is a great one in the end. Aristotle: man has a natural end and in a confused way naturally wills it.

6. Reason as reason is more known to us (“a beast, no more”) #

Point: why Aristotle stresses the first two acts, and why we approach reason and will first as reasoning and choosing.

• Shakespeare’s definition of reason by “discourse” (in the exhortation/agitation speech — Hamlet, inferred) defines reason as reason; reason as reason is more known to us than reason as a nature, as will as will (ability to choose) is more known than will as nature. So he approaches the will as the ability to choose and later finds it wills some things naturally, not by choice; likewise reason. Reasoning is the act named from reason, most characteristic of it.
• Discursus: some Latin logicians use it for the third act; more generally, discourse is knowing one thing from another — not how we know something naturally, which is immediate.
• The ability to reason is not just an ability to reason, nor choosing just an ability to choose. “A very, very subtle thing that Aristotle and Thomas saw.”
• Number illustration again: “three is not two, since three is half of six and two half of four” — right that three is not just two, wrong that there is no two in three.
• Shakespeare, “What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep? A beast, no more”: Metaphysics VIII grants some truth to Plato’s view that natures of things are like numbers — take away one and you have a different number. Take reason from man, a beast; sense from beast, a plant; life from plant, a body; body plus life is a plant, plus sense a beast, plus reason a man. If one reasoned as Shakespeare with numbers: “what is the three if it be half of four? A two, no more.”

7. 341: the undivided and the true or false; statement and time (“where do you find truth”) #

Point: Aristotle distinguishes the two acts as in the beginning of the Categories: understanding of the undivided has no falsehood (and, one may add, no truth in the strict sense); where there is truth and falsity there is a putting together.

• True/false exam joke: “man, true or false? animal? stone?” — one understands what each is, but it is not true or false; put together, “man is an animal,” it is.
• Where do you find truth? In statements. Not by digging (gold, iron — which country has the most truth in its soil?), not swimming (sharks, not truth), not flying. Truth and falsity are found in the same place. Hence, as Thomas notes, Aristotle in the sixth book of Wisdom: truth and falsity are more in the mind than in things, because the statement is more in the mind. Forming a statement does not tell you whether it is true, but forms something either true or false.
• Empedocles comparison: a mindless love brought together heads without necks, teeth without jaws; here it is the mind bringing together man and animal in a statement.
• His example from Greek geometry: the diameter (diagonal) of a square is incommensurable with the side — no line however small measures (“goes evenly into”) both.
• Time enters the statement: “Berquist is / was / will be standing”; in the logic of statement the verb always signifies with time. But “man is an animal” is neither past, present nor future — timeless, eternal; Thomas says God’s knowledge is more like this act than the other because eternal.
• “The false is always in what is put together; even ‘white is not white’ puts not-white together with white”; one can also call these division. Thomas calls the second act composition or division (affirmative: putting together; negative: dividing) — this bothers him because those words have so many meanings even in logic; he prefers “understanding the true or the false.”
• One can understand a statement is either true or false without knowing which: “President Bush is sitting now.”

8. Three meanings of “one”; the mind understands only what is one (“You only understand one thing”) #

Point: one always understands something one; many things must become one to be understood together.

• Understanding what a man is, I am not understanding what a stone is; but “man is not a stone” makes one thing of the two. Syllogism likewise: from “every mother is a woman” and “no man is a woman” to “no man is a mother” — if I stopped understanding the first before the second I could not syllogize; reason makes one syllogism of the two by a unity of order. “What is is before true.”
• Physics I (not all done in class): Parmenides and Melissus deny multiplicity — being is one. Aristotle: what do you mean by being — substance, quantity, quality? They say spherical (Parmenides) or infinite (Melissus), admitting quantity, which cannot be without substance — multiplicity. And what do you mean by one? The continuous (one line, one circle)? Then part outside part, not altogether one. The wholly indivisible, the point? Then not unlimited nor spherical. Third meaning: same definition, one in definition. The same three senses return here.
• Understanding the continuous: a straight line understood as one, not this half then that (that would be two understandings); the midpoint taken not as dividing but unifying — continuous is that whose limit is one. A circle understood by one understanding is taken as undivided; divide it and each part is understood separately. A man’s body: I could think of liver, heart, bones, arm, leg, nose each alone — many understandings, because I have divided the man. (The Greek word is more ambiguous than the English.)
• Text read: the undivided is twofold, in potency or in act; understanding a length, one understands it as undivided in act and in an undivided time, the time divided and undivided like the length; if the mind divides it into halves it divides the time too. When one understands the human body as a whole, it is understood as organized and one.

9. One in definition: what a line is has no length (“How long is what a line is”) #

Point: what is undivided not in quantity but in species is understood in an undivided time and by an undivided part of the soul, accidentally divided by that by which and the time in which it understands.

• How long is what a line is? Students try “just this length”; answer: no length. If what a line is were a line it could be divided, and the part would not be what a line is — yet part of a line is as much a line as the whole. The continuous is divisible forever; a longer line is not more a line. So what a line is is even more indivisible and more one than a line, since it is found equally in each part; understood in indivisible time.
• Anticipation: Thomas later teaches the whole soul is in each part of the body (as to substance, not its whole power). Generally, substance answers “what it is,” quantity “how big,” quality “how it is”; what it is is the same in the whole and each part.
• Eucharist: break the host, you have part of the quantity left from the bread, but the whole Christ in each fragment however far divided — present per modum substantiae, in the manner of what it is; what a line is being equally in every part is a small anticipation.

His words #

• undergoing understanding / acting upon understanding — his renderings [ed.: possible / agent intellect]
• ability — for potency; “from ability to act”
• pathetikos, passive mind — the power receiving in a material organ; particular reason, cogitative power (Thomas, Augustine)
• object of reason — the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined
• understanding what a thing is — first act (Thomas: simple grasping)
• understanding the true or the false — second act (Thomas: composition or division, which he finds ambiguous)
• reasoning — third act; discursus in some Latin logicians
• reason as reason vs. reason as a nature; will as will vs. will as a nature
• nature is determined to one (of two opposites); reason can reason to opposites
• rational ability vs. natural ability (Metaphysics IX)
• Wisdom — his name for the Metaphysics; Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• continuous — that whose limit is one
• one — continuous; wholly indivisible (point); one in definition
• per modum substantiae — Christ in each fragment in the manner of what it is

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima III, 339–340 (mind in act, “this alone is immortal and eternal,” “without this it understands nothing”)
• Aristotle, De Anima III, 341–343 (understanding of the undivided; the false in what is put together; the undivided in potency or act; undivided in species)
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the same (340) on the passive mind; his remark on Metaphysics VI
• Handout, The Art About Statement, p. 7 (detected by text-matching; probably the statement/time/contradiction passage)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, proemium to the Posterior Analytics (three acts of reason)
• Aristotle, Categories, beginning; Metaphysics IV, VI, VIII, IX; Physics I (Parmenides, Melissus)
• Empedocles (heads without necks)
• Boethius (“obvious to the wise”)
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus (Aufidius); the speech “a beast, no more” (Hamlet, inferred)
• Sartre; J. S. Mill, On Liberty
• John 1 (“the light who enlightens every man,” inferred)

His questions #

• Is “not sometimes understanding, sometimes not” about the divine mind? No — Thomas: it is the mind in act as such, opposed to the mind in potency.
• A blow on the brain interferes with thinking; so is the brain the organ of thought? No — that interference is on the side of the object, like smashing the light bulb, given the separate argument that reason is not a body.
• Why isn’t actualized understanding enough — why still imagine a square? Because the object is the what-it-is of something imagined, not a separate form.
• How do you know which contradictory is true? Three ways: by sense (Socrates standing), by definition (no odd number is even), by reasoning (angles of a triangle).
• Is three a third one, or two plus one? Two plus one — as reason and will have nature in them but are more.
• Does my will choose between happiness and misery? No — it naturally wills happiness; choice is of the means.
• Where do you find truth? In statements — nowhere in soil, sea or sky.
• Understanding a straight line, am I dividing it or taking it as one? As one; divided, there would be two understandings.
• How long is what a line is? It has no length; it is found equally in each part of the line.