Pints With Aquinas - 62: How do we know stuff? (an intro to Thomas' epistemology)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Pints with Aquinas depends on your support. If you're an awesome person and want to prove it, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner, and there you can learn how to support the show for as little as $2 a month. Every dollar helps, and we are grateful for your support. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas episode 62. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we'll ask St. Thomas the question, how do we know stuff? Just like any stuff. Thanks for joining us at Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. And today we'll be

Starting point is 00:01:03 talking about a little bit about, I think I need to do several episodes on this, Thomas' epistemology. I'll explain what that means in a minute, but I wanted to say welcome. If this is perhaps the first or second or third episode you've ever heard of Pints with Aquinas, it's really good to have you with us.

Starting point is 00:01:20 Go to pintswithaquinas.com to visit our website. You can view other episodes there. Also, by going to pintswithaquinas.com to visit our website. You can view other episodes there. Also, by going to pineswithaquinas.com, you can join our forum, our closed forum on Facebook. There's hundreds and hundreds of people there chatting. And you can also learn how to support the show because you're an awesome person and you want to prove it and that we've had well over half a million people, or I should say, well over half a million downloads since the start of Pints with Aquinas. That was back in May of 2016. So, just want to say I'm hugely thankful to all of your support, and I do pray that this podcast blesses you. So, epistemology. What does that mean? Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that has to do with knowledge and how we come to know things. And today, I want to begin by discussing something from the Summa Theologiae, the Prima Pars, question 84. And I think we'll have a look here at question six. And just so you know,

Starting point is 00:02:27 whenever you listen to Pints with Aquinas, I always put up the text of Aquinas in that particular blog or the show notes. Again, go to Pints with Aquinas and you can read along. So how do we know stuff? Now, if that doesn't sound like an interesting question to you, it's probably because you haven't given it much thought. It's something we just take for granted. Well, Aquinas says that basically people, philosophers throughout the centuries have had three ways of explaining how we know stuff. And he says, well, let me just break it down and then I'll read you what he says. First of all, you got people like Democritus, who's a materialist, who says, well, the only way one object can know another object is if the other object somehow enters the first object. That's literally what he means. So, if you know what a tree is, that's only because part of that

Starting point is 00:03:22 tree has come into your soul as you're remembering that tree. Now, it might sound weird, but again, think of it that way, like one object knowing what another object is. Like a tree doesn't know what a tree is, and I'm an object just like a tree is, so how can I possibly know what a tree is? Then you've got the sort of platonic view, which is essentially that we have no eye, that knowledge is not caused by the senses. It has nothing to do with the senses. enlightened, our intellect is enlightened, and we remember, you know, the concept or the universal of tree, of tree-ness. And then when we see the individual tree, we kind of, we know then what a tree is. And so you've got the materialist view, and then you've got the completely other end of the spectrum, the platonic view, which is that you don't even need the senses. And then you have what

Starting point is 00:04:23 we might call a moderate view, the Aristotelian view. And this is the view that Aquinas is going to take as well. And that's essentially that, well, the reason we know things is those things first impress themselves upon our senses. And then the active part of our intellect abstracts, part of our intellect abstracts, right, drags out, if you will, the essence from these particular instances we're seeing, and that's how we come to know universals like tree-ness and dog-ness and such. Now, that's just a very brief overview, but let me give you Aquinas' full answer. Again, this is from Article 6, Question 84, first part of the Summa Theologiae. He says this, on this point, the point of knowledge, the philosophers held three opinions. For Democritus held that, quote, all knowledge is caused by images issuing from the bodies we think of and entering into our souls, end quote.

Starting point is 00:05:28 As Augustine says in his letter to Dioscorus, and Aristotle says that Democritus held that knowledge is caused by a, quote, discharge of images, end quote. And the reason for this opinion was that both Democritus and other early philosophers didn't distinguish between intellect and sense, as Aristotle relates in the Dianima. Consequently, since the sense is affected by the sensible, they thought that all our knowledge is affected by this mere impression brought about by sensible things, which impression Democritus held to be caused by a discharge of images. Secondly, Aquinas says the other way people have commonly explained how we know things is the Platonic view. So he says Plato, on the other hand, held that the intellect is distinct from the senses

Starting point is 00:06:26 and that it is an immaterial power not making use of a corporeal organ for its actions. And since the incorporeal cannot be affected by the corporeal, he held that intellectual knowledge is not brought about by sensible things. By the way, when he says sensible things, he means things that impress themselves upon the senses or things that we can sense with the five senses. Sometimes you say, oh, he was a very sensible boy, and that means that he was mature or something. That's clearly not what he means here. So Plato held that intellectual knowledge is not brought about by sensible things affecting the intellect, but by separate intelligible forms being

Starting point is 00:07:13 participated by the intellect. Moreover, Plato held that sense is a power operating of itself. Consequently, neither is sense, since it is a spiritual power, affected by the sensible. But the sensible organs are affected by the sensible, the result being that the soul is, in a way, roused to form within itself the species of the sensible. itself the species of the sensible. Augustine seems to touch on this opinion, where he says that the, quote, body feels not, but the soul through the body, which it makes use of as a kind of messenger for reproducing within itself, is announced from without, end quote. Thus, according to Plato, neither does intellectual knowledge proceed from sensible knowledge, nor sensible knowledge exclusively from sensible things, but these rouse the sensible soul to the sentient act, while the senses rouse the intellect to the act of the understanding. And so now here's the third thing he says, and it has to do with Aristotle. Okay, and this is,

Starting point is 00:08:22 of course, as I say, what Aquinas is going to adopt. And this is, he says, a middle course. So it's between the sort of materialist and the, you know, idealist, or we shouldn't say idealist, that leads us to think of Kant, who we might speak of in a minute, but the sort of Platonic view of knowledge. And that's the Aristotelian way. All right. So this is the middle course. Okay, so Aquinas says this, for with Plato, all right, Aristotle agreed that intellect and sense are different. Now, let's just pause there, because I know some of you that may have gone by rather quickly, not sure what I mean. Intellect and sense, okay, intellect and sense. We need to distinguish between the two, because this is what Aristotle is going to argue. This is what Aquinas is going to argue. When I look at a guitar, the guitar

Starting point is 00:09:10 impresses itself upon my senses without my even willing it. And then the intellect is going to abstract from the sense impression, which I'm remembering, the phantasm, and come to know what it is. So that's kind of what he means and why it's important to differentiate between intellect and sense. And so Plato agreed with that, whereas Democritus didn't. But Aristotle held that the sense has not its proper operation without the cooperation of the body. So that to feel is not an act of the soul alone, but of the composite. You see what's happening here? Do you see why we talk about the human person being a body-soul composite, right? And Aristotle held the same in regard to all the operations of the sensitive part, since therefore it is not

Starting point is 00:10:05 unreasonable that the sensible objects which are outside the soul should produce some effect in the composite. Aristotle agreed with Democritus in this, that the operations of the sensitive part are caused by the impression of the sensible on the sense. However, Aristotle is going to disagree with Democritus in saying that this isn't through discharge, right, where the objects literally enter our souls in a sort of material way. Aristotle is going to say it's not by discharge, right, but by some kind of operation. For Democritus maintained that every operation is by way of a discharge of atoms. But Aristotle held that the intellect has an operation which is independent of the body's cooperation. Now, nothing corporeal can make an impression on the incorporeal.

Starting point is 00:11:02 And therefore, in order to cause the intellectual operation, according to Aristotle, the impression caused by the sensible does not suffice. So, it's not enough that we see a guitar and that guitar imposes itself upon our senses. But something more noble is required, for the agent is more noble than the patient, as he says. Not indeed in the sense that the intellectual operation is effected in us by the mere impressions of some superior being, as Plato held, but that the higher and more noble agent, which he calls the active intellect of which we have spoken above, causes the phantasms received from the senses to be actually intelligible by a process of abstraction. So, according to this opinion, says Aquinas,

Starting point is 00:11:55 on the part of the phantasms, intellectual knowledge is caused by the senses, but since the phantasms cannot of themselves affect the passive intellect, the passive intellect is that which receives the image, and require to be made actually intelligible by the active intellect, it cannot be said that the sensible knowledge is the total and perfect cause of intellectual knowledge, but rather that it is in a way the material cause. So just to kind of sum up Aquinas' view again, Aquinas essentially said that when it comes to acquiring knowledge, well, nothing can come into the intellect that isn't first through sense experience. So, this is actually kind of interesting because unlike angels, So this is actually kind of interesting because unlike angels, right?

Starting point is 00:12:48 Angels have knowledge about material things. How? How do they have knowledge about material things? Well, through the immaterial, right? God infusing knowledge into them. But man is the exact other way around. Man has knowledge about immaterial things, universals, through material things. And that this happens through sense and intellect. To use that analogy of a tree again, when a man sees a tree, the tree impresses itself upon the senses. This causes a phantasm in the mind and the man

Starting point is 00:13:19 then abstracts it with the active intellect. He extracts the universal from the particulars. Now, let's say something about Kant, Immanuel Kant. This is quite interesting, and a lot could be said here. So I'm trying to figure out how much could be said and how much would be helpful. Essentially, Aristotle and Aquinas' view is that we can know objects in the world. We can actually know what a tree is, what a dog is, to some degree or another, imperfectly, but we can have real knowledge of objects in the world. world. But ever since the time of Descartes, that has been thrown into serious question, at least by some. So whereas Aristotle and Aquinas would say, knowledge begins outside of us in the sense that it impresses itself upon us. We abstract it. We right? So, Aquinas, Aristotle, they begin with real things outside the

Starting point is 00:14:26 self. Descartes is going to do the opposite, right? He's going to say, he's going to try and build reality from the inside out, not the outside in. And you've probably heard of Descartes' famous cognito ergo sum, which is Latin for, I think, therefore I am. So, you know, Descartes is like, look, my senses can deceive me. So, here's, Descartes is like, look, my senses can deceive me. So, here's what I'm going to do, says Descartes. I'm going to doubt everything that I can possibly doubt. Everything, right? Am I wearing slippers right now? Well, maybe I'm dreaming. So, okay, I doubt that I'm wearing slippers, you know, and so on and so forth. And this is the one thing he comes up with and says he can't doubt is that

Starting point is 00:15:06 he exists. Why? Because he's thinking that he exists. So he has to exist because if he doesn't exist, well, who's doing the thinking? Well, he is. Okay. So therefore, cognito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. And it was from this sort of axiom that he goes on to try and build out an argument for the reliability of our senses to some degree in the reality of the external world, the reality of God through an ontological argument. Of course, he has to use an ontological argument because he can't rely on sense experience. It's been said that no one doubted the external world until Descartes came up with a proof for it. Let me say that again. No one doubted the external world until Descartes came up with a proof for it. All right. And then here's a very vulgar, simplistic sort of explanation of

Starting point is 00:15:59 how we got to Kant. You've got David Hume, who, you know, Scottish philosopher, he denies causation, right? He says that we actually don't see causation. And so we can't know causation. Like we can know it through induction, like every morning the sun rises. But the problem with induction is that, you know, it can always change. You know, there can be another bit of evidence, another kind of premise that could come and alter the conclusion. So, you know, maybe I'd knock a billiard ball towards another billiard ball, and every other time, that second billiard ball has rolled away from it. Well, that's not a good argument for why I always will do that, he says.

Starting point is 00:16:35 So he says we can't know causation. And the problem, of course, if we can't know causation, science is sort of dead, isn't it? And so next you've got Immanuel Kant, who's going to try and save science. That'd be nice. And he's going to say, here's how he's going to say it. He says that, well, the reason we know anything is because our mind projects these categories upon the world, like space, causation, and these sorts of things. So the problem with this view, while it saves causation and so forth, it's going to mean that we cannot actually know the external world. All we can know are our ideas of the external world. And so he talked about

Starting point is 00:17:22 noumena and phenomena. So like all we can know is the phenomena of things. Like we know the idea we have of a tree, but we can have absolutely no access to the noumena, to the thing that's giving us this idea. Does that make sense? See, we're wading into some heavy stuff here, and I'm afraid I'm not a good enough teacher to make that intelligible, as it were. But that's essentially Kantian idealism, right? Which is completely the opposite of Thomistic realism, right? Thomistic realism says we can know things, they impress themselves upon the senses, we know them, right? To some degree or another, right? Kantian idealism says that we can't know the external world. We cannot know the objects of sense experience. All we can know are our ideas

Starting point is 00:18:10 of it. And what's super cool is that Aquinas preemptively responds to Kantian idealism in the first part of the Summa Theologiae, question 86, article 2. So, I suppose we can say this is a fourth way that people have tried to explain how it is we know things. So the title for this article is, Whether the Intelligible Species Abstracted from the Phantasm is Related to Our Intellect as That Which is Understood. And so I've just very briefly explained Kantian idealism, this idea that we lack the ability to know the essences of things outside of ourselves because all we can know is literally our own ideas and concepts. When we know these ideas and concepts, that isn't to be confused with those things in themselves. All right, here's Aquinas' response to that sort of idea, okay? He says there's a problem for this for two reasons. He says it's actually manifestly false, all right? He says, first,

Starting point is 00:19:19 because the things we understand are the objects of science. Therefore, if what we understand is merely the intelligible species in the soul, it would follow that every science would not be concerned with objects outside the soul, but only with the intelligible species within the soul. Thus, according to the teachings of the Platonists, all science would be about ideas, which they held to be actually understood. Secondly, it is untrue because it would lead to the opinion of the ancients who maintained that whatever seems is true. It's funny that he says ancients. That also sounds kind of 21st century. And that consequently, contradictories are true simultaneously. For if the faculty knows its own impression only, it can judge of that only. Now, a thing

Starting point is 00:20:13 seems according to the impression made on the cognitive faculty. Consequently, the cognitive faculty will always judge of its own impressions as such. and so every judgment will be true. For instance, if taste perceived only its own impression, when anyone with a healthy taste perceives that honey is sweet, he would judge truly, and if anyone with a corrupt taste perceives that honey is bitter, this would be equally true, for each would judge according to the impression on his taste. Thus, every opinion would be equally true. In fact, every sort of apprehension. That's kind of sad, hey? Because I think many people in our culture today would be like, exactly.

Starting point is 00:20:54 Every opinion is true. Come back, Thomism. We need you. All right, guys, that is a really rough and ready, fast walkthrough of Aquinas' epistemology. So in today's episode, to recap, we talked about epistemology. That's how we come to know things. We talked about a materialist view that was held by some of the pre-Socratics. We talked about the Platonic view, which is the sort of spiritualist approach. Senses have nothing to do with knowledge. We talked about the Aristotelian

Starting point is 00:21:28 slash Thomistic view, which is realism. Okay. And then we kind of briefly touched upon Kantian idealism, which is certainly at odds with Thomistic realism. There's been a lot of people who have written lots of great things. I'm thinking especially of Garigou-Lagrange, right? Gilson and Maritain. Those were three French philosophers who in the 20th century wrote a great deal about Thomistic realism. If you're interested, Gilson does not think that you can prove that Thomistic realism is superior. He doesn't think you can disprove Kantian idealism. Garagou-Lagrange thinks that you can. So I'll leave it at that because if there's some of you who are like, oh my gosh, I want to read more, then look up those three names and look up realism,

Starting point is 00:22:23 Kantian idealism, and you can learn a whole lot more. Tell you what, let's not let the conversation stop here. If you guys want to chat about this week's episode, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click forum, and there on our Facebook forums, we can have a lovely little chat. Also, a huge thanks to everybody who is supporting Pints with Aquinas on Patreon. I don't know if you know this or not, but if you give two bucks a month, you get access to an ever-growing audio library of exclusive content. If you give five bucks a month, you also get free eBooks that I've written. If you give 10 bucks a month, you get other things. So go to PinesForTheQuietness.com, click support, and you can learn

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Starting point is 00:23:17 We've got Emily Barry. You remember Emily? It was our first female guest. Yes, well, she's returning. And we're going to be chatting about what St. Thomas and Aristotle have to say about friendship. What is friendship? Seems we live in a day and age where friendship is under attack. We need to re-understand friendship.

Starting point is 00:23:36 So please tune in for that one. God bless you and thank you everyone for listening. I love you. I love you. I do. I will the good of you. I will the good of you for you. Bye. And I would give my heart you you you you you you

Pints With Aquinas - 62: How do we know stuff? (an intro to Thomas' epistemology)

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