Aquinas: The Intelligible Species Is How We Understand, Not What We Understand; Why the More Universal Is Known First

Orientation #

He refers back to having “talked before a little bit about knowing… becoming another as other” (prev. lecture), and says Metaphysics IX “we’ll see sometime when we go to wisdom.” Before the break he reminds them that his notes on the proem to logic especially develop the logic of definition. The previous class treated q. 85 a. 1 on abstraction without falsity; the next continues the replies of a. 3 on the two orders of knowledge.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2: the objections and the sed contra (“the sensible form is not that which is sensed”) #

Point: whether the intelligible forms abstracted from images are what is understood (the objections) or that by which we understand (Thomas).

• Obj. 1: the understood in act is the understanding in act (knowing is becoming the thing known); nothing of the thing is in the understanding except the abstracted form; so the form is what is understood.
• Obj. 2: the understood in act must be in something; not in the material thing outside the soul (nothing material is understood in act); so it is in the understanding and is nothing but the form.
• Obj. 3: Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias I (“his second book in logic, the book on what statement”): vocal sounds are signs of what the soul undergoes; but we signify by voice what we understand; so the undergoings of the soul, i.e. the forms, are what is understood.
• Sed contra (a proportion): intelligible form : understanding :: sensible form : sense; the sensible form is that by which the sense senses, not what is sensed.
• His illustration of the contra: the black of a student’s garment. The eye must first be acted upon; the result is the sensible form; but what I see is the black of the outfit, not the form in my eye.
• A difference between sense and understanding: what sense knows is out there and singular, so seeing can terminate in you; what is understood is universal, and does not exist out there as universal, so “to complete the understanding you have to form a thought.” Here imagination is like understanding: I can imagine a gold mountain, but since none is here I must form an image; likewise I cannot remember my wife or children without forming an image; I cannot think what a triangle is without forming some thought of it.

2. The body: knowing only one’s own undergoing (“all sciences are not about things which are outside the soul”) #

Point: the opinion that our powers know only their own undergoing (so the form would be the thing understood) is manifestly false for two reasons.

1. What is understood is what the sciences are about; if that were only forms in the soul, no science would be about dog, cat, tree, chair, only about forms in the soul — “that’s the way modern philosophers tend to talk,” as for the Platonists all sciences are about the Forms.
2. The error of the ancients: everything that seems so is true, so contradictories are true together (it’s cold here / no, it’s warm). If a power knew only its own undergoing, it would judge only that, as it is affected, and every judgment would be true: the healthy taste judges honey sweet, the infected tongue judges it bitter, both truly. Every opinion equally true, “like they want to say nowadays” — “true for me.”

• Against “true for me”: true is saying what is is; “Berquist is sitting” is true for anyone, “Berquist is standing” false for anyone.
• Student asks whether “acceptio” is grasping; he agrees: every grasping by the mind would be true.

3. Twofold action and the form as likeness (“the stone is not in the soul”) #

Point: the form is that by which we understand, from the doctrine of the two kinds of action (Metaphysics IX).

1. Action remaining in the doer (to see, to understand) vs. action going forth to an exterior thing (to heat, to saw); both come about by a form.
2. The form of the transient action is a likeness of its object (the heat of the heater a likeness of the thing heated); so too the form of the immanent action is a likeness of the object. Student objects: isn’t the heated thing rather the likeness of the heat in the heater? He: the thing heated will be hot and so like the fire; “you could say both.”
3. Hence the likeness of the visible is that by which the eye sees, the intelligible form that by which the understanding understands.

• Reflection: the understanding can come back upon itself, understand its understanding and the form by which it understands (I understand a triangle, and that I understand it, and that too); so the form is understood secondarily; first understood is the thing of which it is the likeness — the blackness, the what-it-is of a triangle.
• The ancients: like known by like (Empedocles: soul knows earth by the earth in it); if for earth we put the form of earth, per Aristotle “the stone is not in the soul but the form of the stone,” it follows that the soul knows through the forms things outside the soul. Aside: the stone in Goliath’s head did not help him know what a stone is; it ended his thinking.
• Kant: a scandal that philosophers have not proved external things; Berquist: the scandal is that they tried. Only the senses convince you of contact with things; his old teacher Casey [ed.: name uncertain in ASR], asked how to argue with one who denies external things: “kick him” — “not a jocular reply, a very accurate reply,” since touch has the greatest certitude and reason knows the outside only through sense; if sense does not know exterior things, reason has no way (as you know of his brother Richard only through him). Democritus fragment, a dialogue of senses and reason: “Our overthrow is your overthrow.”
• Attacks on the senses rely on the senses: wobbly things over a radiator, puddles on the summer highway, the stick in water looking bent — you know you were deceived only by some other sensation you trust.
• Descartes: the senses have deceived us, and a prudent man does not trust what has deceived him; but Descartes admits one is sometimes deceived even in mathematics, so by his rule he cannot trust reason either, hence anything. And the man who says reason is untrustworthy says it by reason: self-defeating.

4. Reply to the first objection (“my kicking is between you and me”) #

Point: the understood is in the understanding through its likeness; “the understood in act is the understanding in act” means the likeness of the thing is the form of the understanding, as the likeness of the sensible is the form of the sense in act; so what is understood is that of which the form is the likeness.

• Thomas’s contrast: when I kick you, the kicking is between us; when I understand, the thing is already joined to my understanding by its likeness — before, not in time but as a cause. Having received the likeness of your garment’s colour and your shape, I can then actually see them.

5. Reply to the second objection (“sight sees the color of the fruit without its smell”) #

Point: “understood in act” implies two things — the thing understood, and that it is understood; likewise “universal abstracted” — the nature, and its abstraction or universality.

• The nature exists only in singulars; being understood, abstracted, universal is only in the understanding.
• Example: sight sees the colour of the fruit without its smell. Where is the colour seen without smell? Only in the fruit; that it is perceived without odour happens to it on the side of sight, which has a likeness of colour and none of smell (that would be in the nose). So human nature exists only in this and that man, but is grasped without their individual conditions, which is to be abstract, to which the intention of universality follows.
• His restatement: from many men remembered, I separate what they have in common; common to them only in the mind, but what is common is something they all have — like the colour of the fruit, which out there has odour and the fuzz of the peach too.

6. Reply to the third objection: what words signify (“what our words are signifying, are the thoughts we form”) #

Point: words signify the thought formed, not the form by which we think.

• In the sensing part, two operations: change only (sense perfected by being changed by the sensible), and formatio (imagination forms an idol or image of an absent thing or of one never seen — gold or glass mountain). Both are joined in the understanding: the possible understanding is first informed by the form, then, so formed, forms a definition (signified by a name) or a composition/division (affirmative/negative statement).
• Compositio and divisio: in the proem to logic Thomas uses them specially for the second act (which he calls understanding the true or false): “man is an animal” puts together, “man is not a stone” divides. Statements are not out there acting on us like dogs and cats; so what our words signify is the thought we form.
• Thomas sometimes calls the first act imaginatio per intellectum, following the Arabic philosophers, because of the likeness: as I have something by which I imagine a gold mountain and then form the image, so there is something by which I think, and then I form a thought of the triangle, explicit definition or vaguer.
• Student: is verbum a more generic name for this? He: yes; it comes up at the beginning of John’s Gospel — Thomas goes back to what takes place in us: a thought proceeds from the one who understands; so when God understands Himself a thought proceeds, the logos. Logos means first word, hence “word,” but secondly the thought the word signifies; so John’s sense is “in the beginning was the thought, and the thought was towards God [as the Greek says], and the thought was God.”
• Antonomasia (a talk he may give on this figure in Scripture): the name of the general given to the outstanding particular or vice versa — “he’s a Romeo”; the White House though my house is white; Christ “the anointed” among all anointed kings, priests, prophets (Saul). John speaks by antonomasia: this is the thought — the only thought that is a substance, a person, God, that expresses God perfectly, that says everything (God understanding Himself understands all else). Our thoughts are accidents, exist only in the mind, are no adequate expression of God.
• His playful poem: God the Father said it all in one word; no wonder when that word became a man he said so little and spoke so much — “brevity and soul of wit,” borrowed from Shakespeare. Scripture’s verbum abbreviatum, which Thomas quotes on the creed.
• Geometry analogy, Euclid Book II, theorem 5: for the same perimeter the square always has more area than a rectangle (perimeter 20: 5×5 = 25; 4×6 = 24; 3×7 = 21; 2×8 = 16; the difference is always the square of the difference between the sides); and a rectangle with more perimeter (24) can have less area. Crooked ancient geometers sold land by perimeter; less fence can enclose more area; the Russian story of running round land. Max Planck: the more universal a theory, the simpler. “Words are to what you say as the perimeter is to the area”: Aristotle or Thomas say more with fewer words; the supreme case is God saying all in one word. Among angels, the higher understand more by fewer thoughts; all fall short of God’s one thought.
• Aside: the proem’s three acts — understanding what a thing is (definition), the true or false (statement), reasoning from statements to another.

7. Article 3: the objections and the sed contra (“the more universals are not before in our knowledge”) #

Point: whether the more universal is first in our knowledge.

• Obj. 1: what is before and more known by nature is posterior and less known to us (Physics I); the universals are before by nature, in the second sense of before in the Categories: that from which the consequence of existence is not converted — one without two, animal without dog, not vice versa.
• Obj. 2: composed things are before for us than simple (that is why the point is defined as what has no parts; you know the composed before the simple, as in showing God is not composed); universals are simpler (animal simpler than dog); so afterwards for us.
• Obj. 3: Physics I, the defined comes in our knowledge before the parts of the definition (we name a thing vaguely before defining it); the more universal are parts of the definition of the less (animal of man); so afterwards.
• Obj. 4: through effects we come to causes and principles; universals are principles; so afterwards.
• Sed contra: Physics I, from the universal to the singular — in the Greek, from the more universal to the less. “Particular” has two meanings in English: the individual (you are a particular man) and the less universal (dog a particular kind of animal); Aristotle’s ta kath’ hekasta likewise. Individuals come first because of sense; among universals the more universal comes first.

8. The body: from potency through confused knowledge (“first arrives at an incomplete act”) #

Point: two things to consider: (1) our understanding originates from sense, and sense is of singulars, so knowledge of singulars precedes that of universals; (2) our understanding proceeds from potency to act, and whatever does so reaches first an incomplete act between the two before the perfect act.

1. The perfect act is complete science, knowing distinctly and determinately; the incomplete is knowing indistinctly, under confusion, partly in act, partly in potency — Physics I: first known to us are the confused, afterwards the principles and elements by distinguishing.
2. To know something containing many things without knowing each is to know it under confusion (knowing animal, I don’t distinguish dog, cat, horse); so both the universal whole (parts contained in potency) and the integral whole (put together from parts) can be known confusedly.
3. To know distinctly what is in the universal whole is to know the less common: to know animal as rational or irrational is to know man or lion. So animal occurs to us first, then man; the same for any more and less universal.

• His images: filling a glass, not empty to full at once; the mind a blank tablet with nothing written, going to imperfect knowledge first; knowing my pet is an animal is less distinct than knowing it is a cat.
• Tie to definition: the genus, first part of the definition, is more universal than the species. Ask a kid what a dog is: “an animal,” then differences. A chair: “something to sit on” — so is a bench, a saddle; “for one person” — still a saddle; add back and legs, and it gets more distinct.

9. The same order in sense, by place and time (“boys from the beginning call all men fathers”) #

Point: sense too goes from potency to act, so it judges the more common before the less common.

• By place: from a distance, body, then animal, then man, then Socrates or Plato — “something up there… it’s moving… a dog… Joe’s dog”; Columbus’s voyages, land or cloud or ship; “it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s Superman” — first only something flying.
• By time: the boy first distinguishes man from non-man before this man from that, so calls all men father. His supermarket story at St Mary’s: the kid in the cart said “Daddy” — “Aristotle was proven right.”
• Reason: the one knowing indistinctly is still in potency to the principle of distinction, as knowing the genus is potency to the difference: a Shakespearean sonnet is “a poem,” then fourteen lines — but so is the Italian sonnet, so another difference.
• Conclusion: knowledge of singulars is before universals for us, as sense before understanding; but in both sense and understanding, the more common before the less common.

10. Certitude and precision (“the more precise you get, the less certain”) #

Point: since we know indistinctly first, we are more sure of the confused than the distinct, hence of the more universal.

• Dry red wine: sure; Cabernet Sauvignon: less; Napa 1973: less still. Beer: very sure; Heineken or Budweiser: might be wrong. Pierre Duhem: a balance between certitude and precision.
• His age: over 20, 30, 40, sure; at 50 or 60 unsure; easier to guess the decade than the year, and a year has 365 days. His weight: 170–180 surer than 174; two scales disagree. Which way the room is longer: sure; how much longer: seven feet three inches may really be seven feet three and a tenth — still surer that it is longer.
• Even records: his father’s papers gave 1891 and 1892; the newspaper said 55 when he was 65.

His words #

• understandable form / species — the intelligible form; Thomas: that by which we understand [ed.: species intelligibilis]
• undergoing — passio of the soul or sense organ [ed.: passion, affection]
• what statement — his gloss on Peri Hermeneias
• true — saying what is is and what is not is not
• acceptio — every taking or “grasping” by the mind
• action remaining in the doer vs. going forth to an exterior thing [ed.: immanent / transient action]
• formatio — the imaginative or intellectual power forming an idol/image or a thought
• compositio / divisio — affirmative and negative statement, second act of reason
• imaginatio per intellectum — Thomas’s (Arabic) name for the first act
• verbum / logos — the thought that proceeds from the one understanding; “the thought”
• antonomasia — general name given to the outstanding particular, or vice versa
• verbum abbreviatum — Scripture’s phrase Thomas quotes
• before — the second sense in the Categories: A can be without B, not vice versa
• particular / ta kath’ hekasta — either the individual or the less universal
• incomplete act — knowing indistinctly, under confusion, between potency and perfect act
• universal whole vs. integral whole — parts contained in potency vs. whole put together from parts

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 85, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–3)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 85, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body) Mentioned:
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias I (vocal sounds as signs of the soul’s undergoings)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (twofold action)
• Aristotle, Physics I (more known to us vs. by nature; the confused first; the defined before the parts of the definition)
• Aristotle, Categories (senses of “before”)
• Thomas, proem to logic (three acts; compositio/divisio; his notes on definition)
• Euclid, Elements II.5
• John 1:1 (logos)
• Democritus fragment (senses vs. reason)
• Descartes (senses have deceived us; the prudent man)
• Kant (the scandal of philosophy); Empedocles; Max Planck; Pierre Duhem; David and Goliath (1 Samuel, inferred)

His questions #

• Is that [the sensible form in the eye] what I actually see, or do I see the black of your outfit? The black of the outfit; the form is that by which.
• How do you argue with somebody who denies the existence of external things? Casey’s answer: kick him — the senses, especially touch, are the only convincing contact.
• How do you know the things over the radiator aren’t really wobbly, or that there wasn’t a puddle? By some other sensation you trust; you criticise a sense only by a sense.
• Where is the colour which is seen without smell? Only in the fruit; being seen without smell happens on the side of sight.
• Are there statements out there acting upon us? No (I may read one, but not as dogs and cats are); so words signify the thoughts we form.
• Is verbum just a more generic name for this thought? Yes; hence “in the beginning was the thought” in John, by antonomasia.
• Can you have a rectangle with less perimeter but more area? Yes (Euclid II.5): the square has most area for a perimeter, and can beat a larger-perimeter rectangle.
• What is a dog? a chair? a Shakespearean sonnet? Kids answer with the genus first (animal; something to sit on; a poem), then add differences.
• Would you be more sure it’s seven feet three inches longer than that it’s longer? No; you are surer of the confused than the precise.