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Little Errors in the Beginning, by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D. (Continued)
Of all the little errors in the beginning that have plagued modern philosophy since its start, the most serious is the one that was made in the psychology of cognition. The most compact expression of it is to be found in the Introduction to John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The error originated with Descartes, not with Locke, but it was the influence of Locke's psychology on Berkeley and Hume, and through Hume on Kant, that led to all the many times multiplied errors that, as Aristotle and Aquinas warned, spring from a little error in the beginning. In the last paragraph (#8) of his Introduction, Locke writes:
A careful reading of this paragraph will disclose a number of points. (1) It is evident that Locke went to school at Oxford with tutors who were scholastics, for it must have been thus that he acquired such terms as "phantasm" and "species" and learned that they stood for factors in the cognitive process. Either he was a poor student or his scholastic instructors were poor representatives of that tradition, for it is also clear from the passage quoted that he did not learn the most important things that the tradition could have taught him about the cognitive process. (2) It is evident that Locke uses the word "idea" to stand for something private: the ideas in one man's mind are not identical with the ideas in another man's mind. Each man has his own. Each of us is conscious of his own, and can directly apprehend only his own ideas. Each of us must infer from their speech and actions that other men have ideas in their minds too. (3) What each of us directly apprehends -- the objects of our apprehension, says Locke -- are always and only our own ideas. But Locke also implies that these ideas come into our minds from without. As Book II of the Essay makes amply clear, the ideas in our minds, the objects we directly apprehend, are caused by things outside our mind -- real existences of one sort or another that we cannot directly apprehend. In fact, as many passages reveal, Locke believes in the real existence of Newton's world of bodies in motion, ultimately composed of imperceptible atomic particles. It is the action of these on our corporeal organs that somehow produces the ideas that are the objects of our minds whenever we are engaged in thinking. (4) As the passage quoted indicates, and as the rest of the Essay fully substantiates, Locke makes no distinction between the sensitive powers and the intellectual powers, merging them into one cognitive faculty, which he calls "understanding" or "mind." Though he uses the term "abstract idea" instead of "concept," an abstract idea for Locke is a product of the same faculty that produces what others would call "sensations" and "perceptions" or "phantasms." If he had used the word "concept" instead of "species" in the paragraph quoted, we would read him as saying that both phantasms (or percepts) and concepts are ideas, without any differentiation between them. The points made in (3) and (4) above reveal the presence here of two little errors, not one. The first is the error of regarding ideas as the objects that we directly apprehend when we are conscious -- thinking or dreaming. The second is the error of failing to distinguish between sense and intellect as cognitive powers which, while they are cooperative in the cognitive process, do not operate in the same way and do not contribute in the same way to whatever knowledge we are able to achieve. These two errors together led to the nominalism of Berkeley and Hume; to the idealism of Berkeley and the phenomenalism of Hume; to Kant's efforts to extricate philosophy from these horrors, by trying to circumvent them with an ingeniously confected theory of mind instead of by correcting the little errors from which they arose; to all the riddles and perplexities of later empiricism concerning the subjective and the objective, concerning our knowledge of the external world, concerning the logical construction of "objects" that we cannot directly apprehend from the sense-data that we do directly apprehend, concerning the referential meaning of any words that do not have directly apprehended items, such as sense-data, for their referents; and so on. To avoid the solipsism that is inherent in Locke's premises, along with the extreme skepticism which Hume sees as a conclusion from those premises but which he tries to avoid, it is necessary to regard ideas -- the only objects we directly apprehend -- as somehow representations of real existences that we cannot directly apprehend. Both Locke and Hume, each locked within the world of his own ideas, have no hesitation in talking about a world of things that are not ideas -- an independent world of nature or reality that would exist and be whatever it is regardless of the existence of the human mind and its cognitive acts. How regarding the private ideas in my own mind as both its directly apprehended objects and also as representations of things that cannot be directly apprehended enables me to have knowledge of or even a rational belief in an independent world of real existences is a mystery that has remained unsolved. And the futile attempts to solve it have produced a variety of other embarrassments and perplexities that have riddled philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries. In The Great Ideas Today for 1973, there is an essay by Professor W. T. Jones on modern philosophy which begins by calling attention to the little error about ideas as both objects of the mind and representations of things, and which traces all the consequences of this error in the serpentine turnings and twistings of modern thought to extricate itself from its traces. Professor Jones, I must add, fails to suggest how the error could have been avoided in the first place. I quote the following paragraphs from this essay's opening pages.
Professor Jones then goes on to show that Kant, instead of correcting the errors made by Descartes and Locke, and instead of rejecting the problems raised by Hume, all of which flowed from those errors, tried to circumvent Hume's conclusions by philosophical inventions specifically designed for this purpose. Post-Kantian thought, both in the 19th and 20th centuries, is not only a record of diverse reactions to Kant's inventions but also a record of selfdefeating attempts to solve problems that would not be problems at all if the errors initially made by Descartes, Locke, and Hume had been corrected. From that false start modern philosophy has never recovered. Like a man who, floundering in quicksand, compounds his difficulties by struggling to extricate himself, Kant and his successors have multiplied the difficulties and perplexities of modern philosophy by the very strenuousness -- and even ingenuity -- of their efforts to extricate themselves from the muddle left in their path by Descartes, Locke, and Hume. The only way out of the debacle of modern philosophy is to go back to its beginning and try to make a fresh start. That fresh start involves an alternative to the error committed by Descartes and Locke. We can find that alternative compactly expressed in a single paragraph of the Summa Theologiae. In q. 85, a. 2 of Part I Aquinas rejects the error of those who, in the objections, say that sensible and intelligible species are that which we perceive and understand. On the contrary, he writes: "The intelligible species is to the intellect what the sensible image is to sense. But the sensible image is not what is perceived but rather that by which sense perceives. Therefore the intelligible species is not what is understood but that by which the intellect understands." The simple distinction between that which is apprehended and that by which it is apprehended (the quod and the quo of apprehension) corrects the error of Descartes and Locke. It should be noted at once that I am here referring only to the first act of the mind -- its percepts, memories, imaginations, and concepts, not to the second act of the mind -- its perceptual and conceptual judgments. The first act of the mind, in which sense and intellect cooperate while remaining distinct, is that of simple apprehension, in which there is neither truth nor falsity, and hence no knowledge in the strict sense of that term. The second act of the mind, involving the composition and division of judgments, is subject to the criteria of truth and falsity. It is only here that we can have knowledge and do have it when our judgments are validated as true. It is not enough to see that the distinction between the quo and quod of simple apprehension removes the error made by Descartes and Locke in regarding ideas as the objects apprehended and also as representations of the things about which we seek to make true judgments and thus come to know. It is also necessary to understand what is involved in rigorously adhering to the view that ideas (percepts, memories, imaginations, and concepts) are always and only that by which we apprehend, never that which we apprehend, when our sensitive and intellectual faculties perform their first acts, usually in conjunction. The first thing which must be understood is that the products of our mind's first acts -- its percepts, memories, imaginations, and concepts -- are totally unexperienceable, uninspectible, unapprehensible. We can never experience, inspect, or examine them; for they are always and only that by which we apprehend whatever it is that we do apprehend, and never that which we apprehend. For the moment I am going to use the word "object" to name that which we do apprehend, thus sharply distinguishing objects from ideas, ideas being that by which we apprehend objects. I will presently have something further to say about objects of apprehension in relation to the order of real existences concerning which we seek to make true judgments and have knowledge. However, I must call attention at once to the negative point that the objects of the mind's apprehensions are in no sense representations of the things we know. In the order of things sensible, through our sensitive powers and their first acts, we experience perceived objects but never the percepts whereby we perceive them; remembered objects, but never the memories by which we remember them; imagined or imaginary objects, but never the images by which we imagine them. In the order of things intelligible, through our intellectual powers and their first acts, we apprehend objects of thought but never the concepts whereby we think them. The objects thus presented to us by the first acts of the mind exist intentionally as presented, whether or not they exist in reality and whether or not, when they do exist in reality, they exist in the same way as that in which they exist intentionally as intended by ideas -- the intentions of the mind. In the order of things sensible, the objects we experience by the acts of our sensitive powers may have existed but no longer exist (as is the case with things remembered); or may have no real existence at any time (as is the case with purely imaginary objects, or objects produced by hallucinosis). So, in the order of things intelligible, the objects of thought, being universal and so having no real existence as such, may or may not have instantiation in the realm of real existences; or they may be of such a character that they cannot have instantiation in reality (as is the case with entia rationis). The second thing which must be understood is that a trichotomy of ideas (the quo's of apprehension), objects (the quod's of apprehension), and things (the quod's of knowledge) replaces the dichotomy of ideas (the quod's of apprehension) and things (the quod's of knowledge). In the trichotomy as well as in the dichotomy ideas are mental existences -- completely private, each man having his own. But in the trichotomy, as not in the dichotomy, the objects of apprehension, not being ideas, are public, not private. Two or more men, as ordinary discourse amply confirms, can talk about one and the same object which is before their minds because each has an idea that presents it to him. The ideas in the minds of two men are two mental existences which, while two existentially, are one in intention; and so the two ideas are that by which the two men intend one and the same object as an object of discourse. Furthermore, the object intended by the two ideas does not, like the ideas, have mental existence, for then it would be the same as an idea. The mode of existence of the object is intentional, neither mental nor real. An entity may have both intentional and real existence; it may have intentional existence without having real existence or even without being able to have real existence; or it may have real existence without having intentional existence. But when, as in the case of veridical perceptions, one and the same entity has both real and intentional existence, the object that the mind apprehends (which has intentional existence as presented to the mind by a percept) is not a representation of the thing (which has real existence whether or not it is perceived). It is the thing-as-perceived. Similarly, in the intellectual order, the universal object of thought that the mind apprehends (having intentional existence as presented to the mind by a concept) is not a representation of an existent universal. When that universal object has instantiation in reality, it is the thing-understood-as-being-of-a-certain-kind. I have said enough to indicate what is involved in making a fresh start by rigorously adhering to the distinction between that which is apprehended (objects) and that by which they are apprehended (ideas); the distinction between that which is apprehended and has intentional existence (objects) and that which is apprehensible and has real existence (things); the distinction between apprehension and knowledge (the first and second acts of the mind); and the distinction between sense and intellect (the apprehension of singular and universal objects). All of these distinctions were lost or obscured in the tradition of modern philosophy that began with Descartes and Locke, giving rise to the consequences to which I have called attention. I do not mean to suggest that the philosophical development that would follow from this fresh start would be without difficulties or even certain embarrassments of its own. Some of the problems to be solved will be noted by a perceptive reader of the brief statement that I have made about what is involved in the new departure. There are others that may not be so apparent. One, for example, that should have been observed is the problem whether, even in the so-called reflexive acts of understanding, ideas are objects of apprehension. Aquinas appears to think that the intelligible species, which "is the form by which the intellect understands," may also be, secondarily, an object that it understands reflexively. When the intellect turns back upon itself, he writes, "it understands both its own act of understanding and the species by which it understands. Thus the intelligible species is that which is understood secondarily, but that which is primarily understood is the thing, of which the intelligible species is the likeness" (loc. cit.). This, I think, is an error and one that can be avoided by distinguishing two ways in which a universal object of thought (not the concept whereby we apprehend it) can be considered: in the first intention, either as instantiated or as capable of instantiation; in the second intention, either in and of itself, without regard to instantiation, or as incapable of instantiation. Problems that may not have become apparent in the brief statement that I have made concern the threefold distinction in modes of being (mental, intentional, and real existence); the peculiar character of the identity between thing and object, which consists in a special type of existential inseparability; the difference between things as having an existence independent of mind in general, objects as having an existence that is not independent of mind in general but only of individual minds, and ideas as having an existence that is dependent on individual minds; the status of entia rationis; and, most difficult of all, the relation between the first and second acts of the mind in the case of veridical perceptions through which the object perceived is known at once to be an entity that has real as well as intentional existence. Work that Dr. John Deely and I have been doing for some years now at the Institute for Philosophical Research gives us reasonable assurance that all these problems can be satisfactorily solved, by taking advantage of distinctions, insights, and formulations explicitly achieved in the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, especially in the contributions of Cajetan and Jean Poinsot, and by developing points that are either not touched on or are only implicitly there. The results of our work will be published by the Institute under the title, Some Questions about Language. Footnotes: 1. Though the 15th and 16th centuries were the centuries of Cajetan and Jean Poinsot, their work exercised little influence on current scholastic thought, and none outside it. 2. See op. cit., New York, 1955: Chapters 14-18. 3. Ibid. See pp. 137-140. 4. New York, 1970. See Chapters 9-11, 13-14, 16. 5. New York, 1971. 6. It would be a further mistake to regard this trichotomy as exhaustive. There are, in addition, (iv) postulates or assumptions that, while not self-evident, are asserted without proof or support of any kind and can, therefore, also be denied; and (v) statements, expressing truths of understanding which, not being axiomatic and indemonstrable, can be supported by reasoning.
Originally published in The Thomist, XXXVIII, January, 1974, pp. 27-48.
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