Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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20 LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW re ence of general ideas, or as they are techni- cally called, Universals, as a solution of the problem of intellectual cognitions, is ab- surd; for since the nature of the problem is such that it is subject to no other scrutini- zation than a hypothetical one, and since that hypothetical explanation derives its weight doo! its success in interpreting the phenomena in consideration, it is both logical and necessary that use be made of such means as are more apt to explain the facts under investigation. Plato evidently disregarded this point in the explanation of the problem, when he rejected the com- mon sense of mankind, which invariably turns to sensible experience to illustrate its loftiest and most abstract concepts. This fact alone is sufficient to tear down the whole Platonic structure of inborn ideas. Although Plato did not succeed in giving a suitable solution to the problem of the origin of intellectual cognitions, his spirit- ualistic interpretation of the phenomenon, generically termed “Exaggerated Spirit- ualism, was taken up by his successors and with constant modifications has been intermittently preserved to our day. Its chief forms are represented by Ontolo- gism, Kant's a priori mental forms and Descartes' theory of innate ideas. The Ontologists, who are principally represented by Malebranche (1638-1712), Gioberti and Ubaghs, taught that the first act of the intellect is an intuition of God and His Ideas. Although under the inspir- ation of more noble Christian sentiments, Ontologism does also owe its origin to an erroneous interpretation of the apparently unaccountable diversity between the object of the intellect and that of the senses. Without entering into a detailed considera- tion of this system, it is sufficient to say that like Plato's idealism, it is also open to several serious objections. If God were the immediate object of the intellect, then our knowledge of Him would be a positive knowledge whereas our present ideas of Him are at best a result of a mental process of negation and analogy. The theory stands also condemned by some of the consequences that may be deduced from it; for if our knowledge of God is a positive knowledge we should then have attained the supreme end of our existence, which is the perfect Happiness derived from the contemplation of the Beatific Vision. And again it would be necessary to hold that the existence and attributes of God are self-evident; which is not so, for a most careful introspection of ourself does not reveal the apprehension of God and His ideas. Ontologism, like Platonic ideal- ism, exaggerates the spiritual power of man and in so doing it is deserving of the same criticism which was meted out to the earlier theory. By far the most important thinker among modern philosophers supporting the hypothesis 2 innate ideas was Des- cartes (1569—1650). He lays down аз a fundamental principle, that the essence of the soul is thought, which finds therein the type of all other intelligible realities. The ego for him is the immediate object of the understanding. Instead of regarding the intellect as a passive power capable of modifications by external objects, Des- cartes holds it to be a purely active sub- stance, able of itself to arrive at the know- ledge of all possible cognitions. Des- cartes does not go so far as to deny that all the mind’s ideas are derived from sense- experience but he divides ideas into three classes: adventitious ideas which are gath- ered by sense perception, factitious ideas, which are evoked by the imagination and innate ideas, possessed by the mind from the dawn of its existence. Among the latter are the notions of the ego, of the Infinite, or Substance, Truth, and in fact all such notions as are of a universal and necessary nature. Like Plato, he holds that the innate ideas are not caused by sensible perception but are awakened on the occurrence of sense phenomena, thus through a special ordination of the Creator Himself truly representing the essence of these sensible phenomena. ` Descartes does not give a more substan- tial account of the origin of intellectual cognitions than his predecessors; in fact his theory fails the more, for it is based upon the result of a mental elimination and rebuilding which is nothing else than a

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 19 Е The Origin of Intellectual Ideas ЖІМСЕ the early dawn of speculative philosophy one of the most difficult and delusive questions both to sage and philosopher has % 3 been the psychological pro- blem of the origin of our intellectual cogni- tions. Here lay an immense gulf, an ap- parently insurmountable barrier which in the apperception of its own prankish mysteriousness—as it were—and in the devilish satisfaction of possessing some hidden secret, accessible to none but itself, was to prove a lasting mockery to the var- ied and unceasing efforts of the human mind to cross its shores. Beyond, the road was smooth and clear, but to cross—ah! that was the question. Among the first speculators to attempt to bridge the gap between the intellectual and the sensible was the Greek philosopher, Plato. Plato analysed the problem care- fully and ultimately came to the conclusion that the void could not in any way be filled. On the one hand he perceived the supra-sensuous mental products, such as the ideas of being, unity, truth, goodness, etc, and on the other the variable and fleeting concrete conceptions of the senses. Between these two apparently contradic- tory camps he could see no connection whatsoever. The proper object of the intellect is the immaterial, that of the senses the material and the sensible. Hence argued Plato to himself: the essential superiority of the one over the other makes it impossible to claim that the former should have originated through the instru- mentality of the latter, or that both are identically the same. According to him therefore, the object of the intellect and that of the senses are two distinct realities entirely independent of each other. But Philosophy had to get on, and the problem, momentous as it was, required some solution. Theonly explanation which appealed to Plato was the hypothesis of innate ideas. It was evident to him that certain mental products are essentially тын сайы айық ақы C До НИНЕ TN түн distinct from and entirely independent of those of the senses. But the question now was: how are these supra-sensuous cogni- tions effected? And this Plato answered by stating that intellectual ideas must have been innate or inborn in the soul antece- dently to all knowledge of the senses. In his view, the sensible world is no real world at all but an aggregate of transient phe- nomena, faint reflexions of a real ideal world in which man, prior to being incar- cerated in the prison of the body for some unknown crime, lived and contemplated these ideas as they really existed. In his second stage of existence, man has retained most of these prenatal ideas, but in a faint and imperfect form. These vague mental states are our present abstract universal concepts. They are not in any way pro- duced through sensible perception but are evoked or awakened, as it were, on the passing of corporeal phenomena. Hence Plato's chief contentions are the existence of a real world of ideas, that these ideas have been imprinted upon the mind and were retained on the union of body and soul. It must be said about Plato that though he tried to solve a difficulty, he placed himself in a more vulnerable position by advancing an hypothesis to which there are numerous fatal objections. In the first place it must be rejected as gratuitous, as being a mere mental elaboration which from the very nature of the case is incapable of verification. His explanation of the origin of our intellectual ideas is a problem which itself needs greater explana- tion. If we have innate ideas, they are presumably to be used in knowing external things; but if the knowledge of external things is already con tained in the dormant ideas of the mind which are awakened on the recurrence of corporeal phenomena, the act of intellection is at best a mere act of recognition. Now if we can recognise the idea in the object, why can we not cognise it there directly? То advocate the outward physical exist-

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 21 A € cleverly disguised absurdity. In founding his ri Mens ia he begins by thrusting from the mind all forms of knowledge what- soever, in order that doubting all he may establish some clear rule of certitude. This done, he finds in thought such a clear and forcible idea of the ego that he is inevitably led to hold it as a necessary truth. Thus he has discovered his rule of certitude, which is a clear idea. But here we must remark that if he begins by doubting all he must also doubt the fact that he can arrive at certitude. The absurdity of his doubt is thus apparent, and, logically pursued, it would ultimately lead to ab- solute scepticism. His division of three kinds of ideas in the mind does not help his theory of the origin of intellectual ideas in the least; for if, as he holds, the intellec- tive and sense faculties are entirely opposed and unrelated, then it is superfluous to admit of ideas that have any connection with the senses. Like Plato and the Ontologists, Des- cartes has failed precisely because he has rejected the universal testimony of con- sciousness by denying the possibility of interconnection between the mind and the senses, and thus his theory must stand condemned, as theirs is, in failing to give an adequate account of the phenomenon which he undertook to explain. In complete opposition to the theory of Exaggerated Spiritualism, stands the doc- trine of the other extreme, namely, Sen- sationalism or Empiricism. Although the tenets of Empiricism can be traced back to the first period of ancient philosophy, it is on the whole a more genuine product of modern philosophical thought. Unlike the idealism of Plato and Descartes which holds that the object of thought is some- thing that is directly and of itself knowable, Empiricism, as expounded by John Locke (1622—1704), Condillac and Helvetius, sought to explain the problem of intellec- tual cognitions by denying any essential distinction between the object of the intel- lect and that of the senses. For the Empiricists, those thoughts which seem to us more refined products of mental reflec- tion are nothing else than higher modifica- tions of sensible perfections, and accord- ingly sense experience is quite adequate to account for all our so-called intellectual cognitions. A logical corollary of this theory is a denial, on principle, of the existence of anything that is not purely material, and consequently an affirmation that man is a mere aggregate of sense or- ganisms without any substantial principle “the soul;” briefly, the natural outcome of Empiricism is Materialism. Empiricism cannot logically and con- sistently be accepted for if man is governed by no other principle than a бо, if, moreover, the intellect and the senses are identical inasmuch as their proper objects are identical, then, most assuredly, man's perceptive faculty cannot go beyond the limits to which it is assigned. If man’s power of knowing is merely a sensitive power, if the mind itself is only the result- ing outcome of an aggregate of sensuous states, then it can at best have merely sensitive cognitions and it can do no more than know sensible material things. But man’s mind, as perceived from experience, does more than know material things; it is capable of uniting, of comparing and of forming abstract concepts of the materials furnished by the senses; how therefore'can these facts be explained without a superior power? This indeed is the fundamental defect of Empiricism. It denies in man the existence of an intellective power, and by so doing renders impossible the explanation of those higher supra-sensuous states with which the mind is endowed. Midway between Exaggerated Spiritual- ism and Empiricism lies the Peripatetic theory of intellectual abstraction. This theory, formulated by Aristotle and ad- vocated and confirmed by St. Thomas, starts from the truth that the cognitive powers of man are twofold: the intellect and the senses, of which the former is superior to the latter. The concrete formal object of the senses is some concrete indi- vidual phenomenon; that of the intellect a universal mental abstraction. According to Aristotle and St. Thomas the senses are purely passive faculties; the intellect partly passive and partly active; passive Ee ЧН a