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| Identity of the Knower and the Known | Those who are new to Thomistic psychology and epistemology are often
confused by the claim that in the act of knowing, the knower becomes
one with the known. Indeed, it is an often misunderstood part of
Thomistic epistemology. If this theory is true, then it nicely sidesteps a
lot of the epistemological problems that lead to skepticism, solipsism or
relativism. The identity of knower and known, then, is to be
distinguished from the view that what we know are ideas or sense
impressions that are caused by extra-mental realities. The Thomistic
view is stronger than the view that our ideas are impressions that are
similar to, or the same in kind with, the object of which it is the idea.
This other theory (ala John Locke) is often called "indirect realism"
because it claims that we do not have direct access to extra-mental
reality, but only indirect access, through impressions and ideas. Thus, on
the Lockean view, there is a chain of causality: things affect us and our
senses producing sense impressions and ideas, and these produce
knowledge. |
| Solipsism and Relativism | There is, then, the obvious problem of knowing that our impressions are
true representations of reality. There is no way to check them that does
not itself rely on sensation and so is open to the same possibility of
error. And since, on this view, one cannot tell if one's senses are
delivering accurate information, one has reason to doubt that there is
any referent for what one senses. One can reasonably (?) say that there is
no extramental object (solipsism), or that there may or may not be an
object, and we may or may not observe it accurately (relativism). The
Thomistic theory cuts off bad consequences like these before they begin
by denying that what we directly (and properly) perceive or know are
sense impressions or our own ideas. Instead, what we perceive is the
thing, and the sensible species (in the sense organ) is that by which the
identity that is perception comes about. It works in an analogous manner
for the intellect: what we know is the universal existing in the thing; the
idea is that by which we know the universal. |
| Assimilation and Identification | The summary so far given merely says what the Aristotelian-Thomistic
theory is not. It is harder to explain what this (non-Lockean) identity
really amounts to and why one ought to believe that Aquinas and
Aristotle are right in their theory. The main point in favor of this theory
of knowledge is the recognition that both sense knowledge and
intellectual knowledge are activities that we engage in. In opposition to
the Lockean view, where sense impressions are things that we suffer and
undergo, Thomas and Aristotle claim that this is not the essence of
sensation, although both admit that there is a passive element in the
organs when they are passively affected by the sense object. Thomas and
Aristotle believe that sensation is an activity that remains in the one who
senses, and is not an activity that passes from an object to the organ.
Thus, Aquinas calls it an immanent activity (as opposed to a transitive
activity- like the heating of water). Aristotle says that it is a kind of
being acted upon or motion, but one that should receive its own name.
Like transitive actions, e.g. the heating of water, something receives a
new form as the water receives the form heat from the fire. However, in
such cases, the form of heat in the water is not the same as the form of
heat in the fire, but only the same in kind, being in different parts of
matter. Moreover, in the case of the heating of water, the water loses the
form that it had before, namely the form of coolness. In the case of
sensation, these features do not obtain: the reception is not of a similar
form, but of the SAME form; and the reception does not involve the
destruction of the pre-existing form, but does involve the fulfillment and
completion of the knowing power; and thus, the reception is not into
matter, but a kind of immaterial reception. Thus, the knower becomes
one with the known, because it IS in a new way, i.e. with the very same
form of the thing known, and this happens in an immaterial way that
fulfills the knower. What I've said about sensation works the same with
the intellect, but the identity is such that it occurs even without an organ,
and thus the intellect is immaterial in an even stronger sense than the
sense powers.
The Aristotelian-Thomistic account, then, neatly sidesteps indirect
realism/phenomenalism that has plagued philosophy since Descartes. It
claims that we directly know reality because we are formally one with
it. Our cognitive powers are enformed by the very same forms as their
objects, yet these forms are not what we know, but the means by which
we know extramental objects. We know things by receiving the forms of
them in an immaterial way, and this reception is the fulfillment, not the
destruction, of the knowing powers. |
| The Fit with Materialism | The theory is not without its problems and it is not entirely clear that it
accords with other things we know about the world, because as a
corollary to the theory, Aristotle and Thomas seems to be making the
claim that what really happens in perception is nothing that can be
empirically verified in the way other material interactions can be
verified. Precisely because perception is an immaterial, immanent
action, it is of a different kind than transitive actions, which is what
their theory would claim scientific observation can detect. Thomists
tend to believe that such a consequence is not fatal to the viability of
this identity theory since they would also claim that the very life of
living things cannot be totally explained, as modern science tries to do,
by appealing only to microscopic parts in interaction (bio-chemistry).
And yet it seems a matter of intuitive experience that an organism is
more than the parts working together (for an organism that has just died
has all the same parts). Thus, although modern chemistry and biology no
doubt make true and illuminating observations about some of the
mechanisms by which living things live and have perception, that sort of
explanation does not totally capture the whole of what it means to live
and perceive. Thus, the appeal to souls and immaterial reception of form
is an irreducible and ineliminable source of explanation. |
| For Further Information | There are fuller explanations of these points with reference to the works
of Aquinas and Aristotle at the page Psychic Powers.
The following are some books on the subject:
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