Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

Page 23 text:

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

Page 22 text:

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

Page 24 text:

22 LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW к in the sense that it requires an intellectual determinant distinct from itself in order to come into action, and active inasmuch as it is the direct efficient agency producing this determinant. In the early ages of life, the mind may be compared to an uninscribed tablet, tabula rasa, a purely passive power, intellectus possibilis, capable of being brought into action; and this is shown by the fact that it is about sensible material things that the abstract judgments of the child are first elicited and that it is to concrete phenomena that we invariably recur to illustrate our most abstract concepts. As the passive intellect is a mere potency incapable of determining itself to action, it must necessarily require some external determinant of the same nature to bring itinto play. This intellectual determinant which is the direct cause of the act of in- tellection is called in scholastic language the species intelligibilis. As soon as it is present, the act of intellection by the passive power follows as a necessary con- sequence. So far, then, is the view of Aristotle and St. Thomas on this matter. But the question now arises: how is the intellectual determinant itself produced? It is evident that it cannot be due to the mere impress of the sense image upon the higher faculty, for a material object cannot directly modify an immaterial power. If this were admitted, then there should arise the greater difficulty of explaining that the mere contact of a material object with the intellect should produce upon the latter an effect which it does not itself possess either formally or eminently; in brief there should be ascribed to the latter a power of producing something greater than itself. It is to give an adequate answer to this question that St. Thomas calls into play the action of an intellectual abstractive force, intellectus agens, which, reacting upon the sensuous stimuli of material images in imagination, prescinds from these images what is concrete, material and individual in them, and picks out for itself what is conformable to its nature, thus placing in the intellect, as a primary stage of intellec- tion, the abstracted intellectual determin- ant, i.¢., the species intelligibilis, which forthwith immediately modifies the passive power of the same faculty so that it can know the essence of the material object. The process of the origin of intellectual ideas as advocated by Aristotle and St. Thomas is then briefly this: an impression of an external object is wrought upon the senses which results in a sensuous phantasm in the imagination. This phantasm, which is the last modification of the sensible faculties, brings into action the active intellect which in turn produces a species intelligibilis of it. This abstracted portion immediately modifies the passive intellect to know, to have an idea or an intellectual cognition of the object of the senses. This then is the solution advanced by Aristotle and St. Thomas to account for the origin of intellectual ideas. Although it does not come home to us with that certainty which is wont to dispel all fear of error, although it may not thoroughly convince us that it is the only adequate explanation to account for the mutual relations of the sensitive and intellectual functions in the human mind, still, when we remember that the whole question ‘is speculative, penetrable by no other human resources than that of hypothesis aided by conscious experience, if we shall judge it by the plausibility and harmony of its inter- pretation, we must say in all sincerity and good faith that it is vastly superior to any other attempt to solve the same difficulty. If in it we do not see with the same irresist- ible evidence as we do that twice two is four, it is because no such evidence is attainable in this matter; if in it we fail to recognise the force of demonstration, it is because in this limited field of action it cannot be effected. But on the other hand we must say this in its favour, that, unlike all other solutions of the same problem, it carries with it the conviction of possibility and that it does not come into conflict with or destroy any other evident truths. Un- like Exaggerated Spiritualism, it does not reject the testimony of conscience by advo- cating the unpalatable doctrine of two mutually exclusive souls in man. Unlike Sensationalism, it does not do away with