Immortal Souls provides as ambitious and complete a defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology as is currently in print. Among the many topics covered are the reality and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificial intelligence, and the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptions of human nature. Along the way, the main rival positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engaged with and rebutted.
"Edward
Feser's book is a Summa of the nature of the human person: it is, therefore,
both a rather long – but brilliant – monograph, and a valuable work for
consultation. Each of the human faculties discussed is treated comprehensively,
with a broad range of theories considered for and against, and, although
Feser's conclusions are firmly Thomistic, one can derive great benefit from his
discussions even if one is not a convinced hylomorphist. Every philosopher of
mind would benefit from having this book within easy reach."
Howard
Robinson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Central European University
“Feser
defends the Aristotelian and Thomistic system, effectively bringing it into
dialogue with recent debates and drawing on some of the best of both analytic
(Kripke, Searle, BonJour, Fodor) and phenomenological (Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus) philosophy. He deftly rebuts objections to Thomism,
both ancient and modern. Anyone working today on personal identity, the unity of
the self, the semantics of cognition, free will, or qualia will need to engage
with the analysis and arguments presented here.”
Robert C.
Koons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
CONTENTS
Preface
Part I: What
is Mind?
1. The Short Answer
2.The Self
3. The Intellect
4.The Will
Part II:
What is Body?
5.Matter
6. Animality
Part III:
What is a Human Being?
7. Against Cartesianism
8. Against Materialism
9. Neither Computers nor Brains
Part IV: What
is the Soul?
10. Immortality
11. The Form of the Body
Index
Going right on my Christmas list
ReplyDeleteI've always thought these book announcements were akin to hearing your favorite band is going to drop a new album. Congratulations on bringing it to the finish line (well, almost at least)!
ReplyDeleteNot to be ungracious, but the cover is a little hard on the eyes - kinda how TLS was now that I think about it. Are we committed on the color? :)
That is a topic in great need of re-exposition, as we confront the essential nothingness of the current conception of the human person, and the subsequent evaporation of the idea of objective human value.
ReplyDeleteNot, that most humans on the face of the planet ever affirmed it anyway. But "we" used to, before emotion and inchoate urges became the sole measure of man's meaning and fulfilment.
Re-limning the lines of demarcation between the prevalent meat machine, no there, there, version of the human organism in all its nihilistic conceit, and a perspective which potentially gives us a deep reason not to smash the face of an annoying and unneeded other if one may do so conveniently, is a profoundly worthwhile effort.
The western world is choking to death on its own deconstructed version of man. The supposed thought leading vanguard of taxonomic-humanity is frantically scrambling to escape its own humanness - on the basis of an impulse it cannot itself justify as anything other than as a brute, cosmically pointless, fact.
Their anthropology, reduces to man as a collocation of meaningless appetites encased in a skin sack: no real self, neither conscious nor self-directed in any meaningful sense, yet proudly claiming agency and a social right to one's consideration. With pretentions of eventual godhood. Thus, a thing that does not understand itself, and which is in principle and on the basis of its own metaphysics incapable of doing so in any ultimate sense, nonetheless imagines itself as god.
Perhaps this book can do some good before the race of man evporates completely. Or is forevermore conceived of as a deoxyribo automaton worm in a flesh sheath.
Be sure and send a copy to the current pope. Kinda help him firm up his stupid fideist brotherhood of humanity business on a rational basis.
Maybe.
Looking forward to adding this to my bookshelf.
ReplyDeleteBeen waiting for this book for years now!
ReplyDeleteSee's Heidegger, is interested
ReplyDeleteDr. Feser, do you would send this book like a gift to David Bentley Hart (just a jokey). I buy the book of him on mind- and I waiting arrived. And, of course, I going to buy your book on soul. I really thing that you and him could talking more about mind and soul; and I would appreciate if you talking more about the vision of Dr. Hart with respect monism - especially now that him will release a book about this theme.
ReplyDeleteI compelling with this vision - especially the vision of my compatriot, Bernardo Kastrup, on analitycal idealism - inasmuch I think that is more cogent and simple. In the question of analitycal idealism, despite of good thesis about that the more fundamental is mind, Kastrup continue with one of the greatest dogma of naturalism: mecanicism - how intentionality could evolve if the subvenient basis is mechanical? Doesn't make sense at all.
Anyway, from the land of Vera Cruz, God bless you Dr. Feser.
Very excited to see and read this! Thanks for all your hard work, Dr. Feser!
ReplyDeleteYoooooooooo
ReplyDeleteDr. Feser, congrats on the upcoming release of the your new book. Am very much looking forward to reading it.
ReplyDeleteSince my philosphical anthropology is Wittgensteinian based I'm glad to have the opportunity to do a detailed comparison of the two.
I hope he interacts with P. M. S. Hacker’s recent treatise on Human Nature.
DeleteTo Anonymous,
DeleteOne would hope so, bu I am very doubtful. He seems to be focused on addressing the claims made by analytic philosophers who are more in the mainstream of analytic philosophy. That would include folks like Searle, Dennet , Kripke and the Churchlands. Which makes sense, because most materialists or naturalists rely on their work when critiquing those in the supernatural camp.
Also, Hacker's tetralogy on human nature is more than 1,500 pages long. Impossible to address it adequately while still presenting one's own views.
Looking forward to your analysis of Heidegger. Despite never having studied his work as a stand alone subject [ pre or post "turn"] in an academic setting, I have a shelf full of his works; some well worn, others briefly engaged. And naturally, having done course work in Phenomenology and Existentialism, as well as philosophical anthropology, one would encounter him. But oddly enough, almost tangentially.
ReplyDeleteThe standard bibliographical note that he started out studying scholastic philosophy is kind of interesting, and we shall see if it bears on the trajectory of his thinking [ viewed positively or negatively] in your coverage.
Thank you for the work you put into this.
ReplyDeleteI CAN'T WAIT TO PUT MY HANDS ON IT!!!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAs big as it is, I could use the book to keep my door propped open
pretty good comments, professor. some wry, some cute, others, well this is not my point. If, and only if, the immortal soul notion is right, then I will change my stance on the life/death question. More later---when I can figure it out.
ReplyDeletePaul, this side of the grave, no one will ever be able to really "figure it out." But many people, many very learned people, will think they have.
DeleteLooks awesome! Excited to read and study it.
ReplyDeleteWhen is it hitting the shelves?
ReplyDeleteYes, please.
ReplyDeleteThe most important announcement of the year!
ReplyDeleteYes, it is always therepeutic to have a good laugh in these glum times.
Delete"Souls on board"
ReplyDeleteThe terminology we habitually use to describe ourselves, i.e., our lives, in the most critical moments may tell us quite a bit about our largely ingrained and unconscious assumptions about existence.
I was surprised to hear airline pilots and traffic controllers use terminology that most of us encounter only in novels about 19th Century seafaring disasters.
I would have expected "seat occupants", or "live cargo units".
See instead, 5:58 of the mayday call exchange.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u88OZrltEFs
In this case, captains hanging on to tradition must have some other explanation than the pathetic and contemptible one deployed when the soulless flesh-robot meat computers of the religion of scientism claim that they continue to use the language of intentionality, free will, and purpose, merely out of convenience. (And not because these acolytes of scientism - so brave! as they are - fear the practical and corrosive blow back effects of being themselves socially reduced to, and then treated by others as, quasi zombies on a predetermined trajectory, and therefore liable to ordinately be treated [ or rather, ' dealt with' ] like any other material thing: which of course, their own ideology implies that they are.) Right Daniel? Can you hear me down there??
Don't worry folks. There is no harm in talking like that, really. It lived, more or less morphed into a giant lump of gasping flesh, then it died, and it is and feels no more. And now apart from whatever advantage or utility can be derived from its residuum, it can be forgotten about. Unless you happen to be an emotionally sensitive type.
Anyway, the audio reminds us it was not always presumptively seen as so regarding the human person: and not too long ago, at that.
Still obsessed with Daniel? I think his family, friends, colleagues and former students are celebrating his life., while you just vent into the blogosphere.
DeletePlease ask them to include headers on the pages so that one can know what part one is in while flipping through. Aristotle’s revenge is harder to navigate without headers.
ReplyDeleteTalk with Sam Harris about will.If you want...I left a remark today on *the problem with hell*, @ another blog. Shortly put, it seems to me there is no problem. I commented there, roughly, the problem would come without a 'problem' of hell. That would render axiology and deontology pointless. Although, as a practical matter, they already ARE pointless. Nihilism? No, realistic pragmatism. Carry on...Professor.
ReplyDeleteWCB
ReplyDeleteA quick look at Amazon seems to have a number of books on the subject of the soul available. Not all seemingly worth reading. Are there any books on the soul worth reading?
WCB
Thomistic Psychology by River Brennan
DeleteJ.P. Moreland, Ph.D is an evangelical Christian philosopher who written a number of books.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Soul-How-Know-Real-Matters/dp/0802411002/ref=asc_df_0802411002/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=693373621819&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5725642790750795543&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9012821&hvtargid=pla-492050638239&psc=1&mcid=148bcf201f2e3bf7b9251d40ece4a052&gad_source=1
I am interested in whether Prof. Feser's new book will talk about the relation between soul as principle of motion in the animal and the First Unmoved Mover. Aquinas says in his commentary on the De Anima that "soul itself is the source (fons) and first principle (principium) of all motion in ensouled things" (In I DA l. 1.7).
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the belief basis for questions and answers on such matters. Gerald Edelman hypothesized there were primary and higher order levels of consciousness in living things. Like it or not, this supports notions of evolution---like it, or not. Insofar as I am not bound to belief, doctrine or dogma, this labels me athiest. Or, at best, agnostic. OK. I look to science for guidance. Nothing more to say.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Ed, looking forward to read it!
ReplyDeleteOh hurrah, can't wait to buy it!
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to read it, thank you!!
ReplyDeleteHi Ed. I hope that in your book, you'll be addressing the scientific evidence that we store concepts in our brains, and that "by linking up different clusters in the brain that are responsible for storing groups of concepts, our species gained the capacity to think and communicate using metaphor." That's a quote from an article titled "How Neanderthal Language Differed From Modern Human," by Steven Mithen, Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link:
https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2024/05/21/how_neanderthal_language_differed_from_modern_human_1032870.html
See also this article on how concepts are encoded in the brain (you can read the PDF online):
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811916301021
Additionally, Steve Mithen has found archaeological evidence that human language (which enabled our ancestors to engage in forward planning, which helped them during hunting) appeared in a rudimentary from about 1.6 million years ago, about 300,000 years after the appearance of Homo erectus. Language gradually became more sophisticated over the course of time, and did not become fully modern until about 100,000 years ago, when our ancestors acquired the ability to use metaphors. See here:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/human-evolution-language-origin-archaeology-b2517744.html
In short: the scientific evidence that the brain thinks is very strong, and there appears to be no clear dividing line between humans and non-humans. All we can say is that before 1.6 million years ago, our ancestors weren't human, and that over the next 1.5 million years, they became increasingly more human. This doesn't square well with the Thomistic claim that it is our rational soul (not our brain) that forms concepts, that a vast infinite gulf separates animals with rational souls from those lacking them, and that there was a definite moment in history when the first animal with a rational soul appeared. Comments, anyone?
None of it squares well with Genesis or indeed the rest of the Scriptures. God of course labels Adam a 'living soul' in 2:7 but this of course is the Hebrew word nephesh which is the exact same word he also uses of the animals throughout ch 1! Indeed the scripture repeatedly states 'man is like the beasts that perish' and 'there is no advantage for man over beast for all is vanity' and ' do not trust in mortal man...his spirit departs he returns to the earth in that very day his thoughts perish' and 'they sought the young childs soul to destroy it' and 'the soul is IN the blood' (!!!) etc etc.
DeleteSo either we're purely material beings in our fallen state or we're the combination of a spirit and a material body ie spirit + matter = living nephesh. When the spirit departs we then become dead nephesh or dead souls. If there was no resurrection of the dead there'd be no hope as Paul EXPLICITLY affirms in 1 Corinthians 15.
(The scientific evidence is not helpful to the secular mind. It would appear from your references that humans appeared much earlier in a sophisticated state which leaves much less time for evolution and therefore makes Divine Intervention even CREATION even more necessary)
There are more possible concepts than there are possible brain states. Hence there cannot be a one to one mapping of brain states to concepts.
DeleteI don’t see why any of that should be taken as evidence against the Thomistic claim. Concepts are immaterial, phantasms are material. The immateriality of the soul is the bright line between humans and non-human animals.
DeleteAs the other anon said, I didn't see anything in that second link that would surprise or even really challenge the Thomistic claim. The experiment conducted seems to be merely correlating activity in certain brain regions with the usage of language...which is what one would expect, A-T philosopher or otherwise. It's not like they conceive of the brain as a useless hunk of grey meat that plays no role in human cognition.
DeleteVincent, in your estimation, do the scientific discoveries you cite hold any more evidential value against the Thomistic idea of the soul than the existence of intoxicating substances? Why or why not?
DeleteHi everyone. The discoveries I've cited do much more than merely establishing a connection between mind and brain, as the existence of intoxicating substances does. What they do is to demonstrate an unexpected physical connection between different parts of the brain, each of which corresponds to different concepts held in the mind. THAT is what's so surprising about the new research - especially the research cited in my second link. Thomism does not predict this singular pattern of connections in the brain, and it can "explain" it only in retrospect, which amounts to Monday morning quarterbacking.
Delete"Thomism does not predict this singular pattern of connections in the brain"
DeleteExcept it does? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the Thomistic philosophy of mind is based on the assumption that universal concepts are abstracted from singular PHYSICAL particulars. That conceptual reasoning or language use are deeply connected with physical stimuli is not unexpected at all, and in fact that this particular philosophy of mind generates no concept with such evidence is one of the reasons it's so convincing. I think you do not understand the A-T thesis on the nature of the mind if you think otherwise.
Furthermore, I don't think you understand what is meant by a "concept" in the A-T sense, because that paper does not provide any real explanation of how such a thing could exist in physical form at all. The ideas of "concept formation" it discusses and compares to the experimental results are far, far, far more modest then what would be needed to defeat the A-T argument for the immateriality of conceptual reasoning.
Vincent,
DeleteAccording to Thomism, the intellect uses a variety of mental images (visual images, auditory images, tactile images, gustatory images, and olefactory images) to aid its comprehension of concepts. The mental images are physical/material; the concepts are not material. The brain is also involved in manipulating these images (rotating them, translating them, reflecting them, changing their speed or pitch or key or resonance or luminosity or intensity, duplicating the images etc.), which are physical processes that aid deductive reasoning. I am sure that there are numerous other ways in which how humans think involve different parts of the brain. It is entirely unsurprising to Thomism that a damage to a specific part of the brain results in a specific difficulty in abstract reasoning. Of course, Thomism does not make specific predictions about which part of a brain being damaged results in which defect in reasoning; that involves biology.
I have another question about something Aquinas says in his commentary on the De Anima. He says that the "Platonici" used to posit that understanding (intelligere) is either by "phantasia" or not without phantasia. Where did Aquinas get this about Platonists? It seems wrong.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Plato represents people as coming to know intelligibles by recollection from many cases of working with sensibles, and as using sensible things as images from which to reason, Plato also represents the highest stage of reasoning as operating by means of the intellect upon Forms; cf. e.g. Phaedo 79a: "you could not grasp the things that are without change by any other instrument than the reasoning of thought, but they are eternally in this way [i.e. unchanging] and not visible."
Not all acts of intellect use phantasia in the sense of mental picturing. Is Aquinas attributing "phantasia" to Platonists under some other signification, or is he using a superficial, secondary source?
Great news! Congratulations.
DeleteIf i'am not mistaken, St. Thomas had from Plato only a part of the Timaeus, the rest of his sources on the man were secundary. I don't believe he had much more from the other "pure" platinists.
DeleteFirst, where exactly is this located in the commentary? And secondly, isn't it a commentary on Aristotle's work? So is it not Aristotle and rather than Aquinas who is telling us what the Platonists were thinking?
Delete@bmiller: it's at "In I DA" l. 2.18.
ReplyDelete@bmiller #2: R.J. Henle SJ in 1956 wrote a book on the Plato and Platonici texts in Aquinas. I got it by googling some of the Latin words in the De Anima commentary. About the statement at paragraph 18, Henle says: "Source: I have been unable to find a proper source for this doctrine. Themistius says {De An. Par., V [CG V, 90.29]) that Plato described phantasia as a combination of sense and opinion."
ReplyDeleteAs far as my word searches go, Aristotle mentions Plato only once in his De Anima, and there only to refer to Plato's saying in the Timaeus that "Plato makes the soul out of the elements" (404b17).
Henle provides other passages where Aquinas quotes a Latin translation of Themistius. So he seems to have access to Themistius via a translation. Maybe Henle's answer to my question is the best I'm going to find, at least for now.
I have not found a place in Plato where phantasia is described as a combination of sense and opinion (doxa). Without searching further, I am guessing that Themistius made an inference from Plato's Theaetetus or Sophist.
ficino4ml,
DeleteHave you read this?
https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/DeAnima.htm#14
Aristotle lists 3 sources from Plato in De Anima referring to: Timaeus, ‘In the lectures “On Philosophy” and when referring to a quote about mind being the Monad.
It seems De Anima has quite a bit of discussion and criticism about Plato's views on the soul.
But he discusses
Sorry about leaving those extra words.
DeleteThe only reason I even commented was because of the presumption that Aquinas was somehow responsible for misanalyzing a Platonic doctrine when his goal was to comment on Aristotle's work, not criticize Plato's. Therefore it doesn't make sense to me why the first question would be "How did Aquinas misunderstand Plato?" rather than whether Aquinas understood Aristotle.
Looks to me that Aristotle had a lot to say about all early philosophers, what they agreed on and how they differed, what they got right and what they got wrong. It seems he took issue with Plato's theory of compound soul and how it ended up making imagination (and so sense) a part of the intellect.
@bmiller: I did not say that Aquinas misunderstood Plato OR Aristotle. I asked where "did he get this", i.e. whether Aquinas could have been using a source that got Plato wrong, or whether Aquinas was using "phantasia" in some non-standard sense.
DeleteThanks for the reference. I only started reading Aquinas' commentary on the De Anima, so I had not reached that passage yet.
The commentaries I have on the De Anima say the "lectures on philosophy" is probably Aristotle's own work, in which he had discussed views of Plato.
Deleteficino4ml,
I asked where "did he get this", i.e. whether Aquinas could have been using a source that got Plato wrong, or whether Aquinas was using "phantasia" in some non-standard sense.
Since the commentary is on Aristotle's work, I still wonder why you would not first think that Aristotle was using some source you were not familiar with rather than Aquinas. De Anima only lists the 3 sources, so the Platonic critique it is presumably based on those and Aquinas appears to use only those in his commentary.
The commentaries I have on the De Anima say the "lectures on philosophy" is probably Aristotle's own work, in which he had discussed views of Plato.
This doesn't seem to make much sense. Why would Aristotle claim Plato gave a lecture when it was really his own work. It would be a preposterous lie easily known to be so by people in his own lifetime.
@bmiller: 1) Aquinas says that "the Platonists" were positing that "intelligere" - to understand or use the intellect or however you want to translate this infinite - is phantasia. In the passage you linked from Ari's De Anima 404b, nowhere does Aristotle say that the Platonists said that understanding is phantasia. Aquinas' statement about the Platonists' doctrine of phantasia therefore must rely on some source other than De Anima 404.
Delete2) a. Aristotle wrote a work, apparently in the form of a dialogue, entitled On Philosophy. He refers to it in his Physics (194a36), using passive voice: "it has been said" [i.e. "by me"]] Fragments from On Philosophy are collected by Rose and by Ross, although scholars have contested the provenance of individual fragments. We have no evidence that Plato wrote a work of that title. There are two spurious Platonic dialogues that bear "On Philosophy" as their second title, sc. Theages and The Rivals (Anterastae), but neither of those goes into detail about the composition of soul, and Aristotle's way of quoting a Platonic dialogue is either "Plato says in the X" or "the Socrates says".
b. The reference in De Anima 404b is not worded as "Plato says." It is in passive voice: "it was determined/defined in a similar way in the things said about philosophy..." Aristotle is not claiming that Plato gave a lecture. You're reading more precision into the text of DA 404b than that passage contains. The problem arises from that passage's vagueness (not an uncommon problem for readers of Aristotle).
Aristotle's vagueness has led to controversy about that second notice re Plato's views about soul. Aristotle might be referring to: lecture/s given orally by Plato about philosophy; a written work of Plato's about philosophy; his own (Ari's) written work about philosophy. As I said, there is controversy among scholars who take one of these positions. Christopher Shields in his recent commentary on the De Anima thinks Ari may be referring to a lost work of Plato's, but he gives no argument for this and allows that Ari may be referring to his own On Philosophy. In the latter case, Ari in DA 404b will mean, "as was defined/determined [by me] in [my] things said About Philosophy [in the part where I discussed Plato's views about soul]."
It's challenging to control material like this.
I confess I am no closer to an answer about where Aquinas got the notice that the Platonists posited that understanding is phantasia. Not even Henle's passage from Themistius gives that information. Note that I am not laying responsibility for this false piece of doxography upon Aquinas.
The question matters for our understanding of Aquinas' sources, but it may not be answerable.
ficino4ml,
ReplyDeletenowhere does Aristotle say that the Platonists said that understanding is phantasia. Aquinas' statement about the Platonists' doctrine of phantasia therefore must rely on some source other than De Anima 404.
Why does that necessarily follow? Aristotle identifies Timeaus as a source which implies that the soul is a compound of the immaterial and the material. The soul understands the material by directly sensing it. Aristotle holds that the senses produce images that are then understood by the intellect. The Timeaus version collapses the intellect and imagination. Thomas is explaining what Aristotle's theory is and how and why it differs from previous philosophers. Maybe you think that Thomas shouldn't have cut to the chase, but all of this is implied in De Anima.
You're reading more precision into the text of DA 404b than that passage contains.
I'm only reporting what Aquinas wrote in his commentary of De Anima. This is in Book 1, Chapter 2:
The first is from the Timaeus, where Plato says that there are two elements or first principles, Identity and Difference.
48. The second passage, showing that this was Plato’s theory, Aristotle refers to when he says ‘In the lectures “On Philosophy”.’
51. Then at ‘Again, rather differently,’ Aristotle alludes to the third text adduced to show that for Plato the soul was made up of elements or principles.
Regardless of what other commentators think, Aquinas thinks Aristotle is referring to these 3 works of Plato as a background to begin his critique. Are you actually reading the commentary on De Anima? Or are you just reading commentators on the commentary?
Aristotle's vagueness has led to controversy ...
It seems more probable that the "On Philosophy" reference was to a real work by Plato that is not currently known. It seems a real stretch to think Aristotle would be quoting himself.
@bmiller: please cite the passage/s where:
ReplyDelete1. Aristotle states that Plato or Platonists identified understanding and phantasia;
2. Aristotle says that it's his own view that understanding is the same thing as phantasia.
3. Aquinas states that "the things said about philosophy" is a reference to lectures given orally or written by Plato.
In various places in his treatises, Aristotle quotes his own earlier works and uses passive voice to mark things he wrote in those works about views of other philosophers. I gave you one such reference from the Physics.
ficino4ml,
ReplyDeleteRegarding 1. Sorry, I never claimed to have such passages. Are you claiming you have passages where Aristotle states that Plato or Platonists did not identify understanding with phantasia? Or are you claiming that Plato and Platonists always claimed understanding and phantasia are different? Google search shows there are different opinions. At least the paltry searches I did.
Regarding 2. Aristotle claims that understanding is specifically not the same thing as phantasia. What an odd thing to ask for.
Regarding 3. I've already directed you to where Aquinas made the claim. It preceded the first quote I posted last exchange. Here it is:
46. Next, when he says ‘In the same way Plato’ Aristotle states the opinion of Plato who also, he says, made the soul consist of elements, i.e. be constituted by the, principles of things. And as evidence for this statement he takes three passages from Plato. The first is from the Timaeus,...
Why would Aquinas lump Timeaus and 2 things Aristotle wrote himself and claim all 3 were passages from Plato?
@bmiller: you are offering no new evidence, and the constructions you put on the texts are contentious.
Delete@bmiller #2: I asked three questions. None of those three was a claim. I made claims in the paragraph below the questions.
ReplyDeletere 1: AFAIK, we have no extant passage in which Aristotle says that Platonists identified understanding and phantasia. Since you have no such passage either, let's agree that Aristotle does not say this in any extant passage.
I fail to understand why you resist the conclusion that Aquinas used some other source than Aristotle when he said towards the beginning of his commentary on De Anima that the "platonici" used to posit that "intelligere" was phantasia. Would you not think that Aquinas used some other source or perhaps arrived at this statement by his own inferences? But if the latter is true, then we have to confront the question, whether Aquinas misinterpreted something. The thought that Aquinas misinterpreted something seems uncongenial to you. Note: I am not claiming that Aquinas did misinterpret; only that it looks as though some source he used may have misinterpreted.
There is no way that anyone can argue from the texts of Plato that understanding is IDENTIFIED with phantasia. I take this information as read so don't elaborate.
A problem is that the Latin "intelligere" can render more than one Greek verb of cognition, either "noein" or "epistasthai" or "suneidenai" or "epaiein" or even others. It cannot render any Greek equivalents of "perceive" or "opine". Since Plato in the Sophist said that phantasia is a mixture of perception and opining, Plato cannot be supposed to have identified phantasia and understanding. Maybe some other Platonist did so (Xenocrates? Ari talks about how dumb Xenocrates was). But we have no such fragment of Xenocrates that I've seen.
2. Your "what an odd thing to ask for" is gratuitous.
3. You are relying on English translation. Aquinas did not use the words "passages from". He wrote "quod Plato dicat animam compositam ex principiis rerum, probat per triplex dictum Platonis." This means "that Plato says that the soul is composed out of principles of things, he proves through three sayings [lit: through a triple saying or dictum] of Plato."
It does not follow that each "dictum" discussed by Aquinas came from a written work of Plato's. We only know that Aristotle's first Platonic source was the Timaeus, a written work. Aristotle for the second Platonic dictum cites "the things said about philosophy." You think it's probable that such was a written work of Plato's, but you have no evidence outside the passage, and against you is the fact that Aristotle 1) wrote a work called "On Philosophy," in which he discussed theories of others, and 2) Aristotle has the habit of citing his own work for discussions of other philosophers' opinions and using a passive voice construction to do so, just as he uses passive voice "it was determined" here in DA 404b.
So Aristotle is not claiming anything about "passages." He is claiming to give three pieces of info about what Plato said. We have a lot of info in Ari about Plato's "esoteric" discussions/teachings, i.e. those that were not written in dialogues but discussed in the Academy or in at least one public lecture, the notorious lecture "On the Good."
2.
ficino4ml,
ReplyDeleteI think I understand why you reach the conclusion you do, and I've tried to explain why I think there are other possible conclusions. It seems to me that you are not actually reading the commentary but are relying only on secondary sources.
Regarding 1:
I fail to understand why you resist the conclusion that Aquinas used some other source than Aristotle when he said towards the beginning of his commentary on De Anima that the "platonici" used to posit that "intelligere" was phantasia.
I resist that conclusion because Aquinas is trying to explain why Aristotle says what he says in De Anima. If he didn't think Aristotle attributed that position to the Platonists it would make no sense for he, Aquinas, to bring it up while describing Aristotle's thought process. I thank you for insisting that Aquinas was attempting to insert his own personal opinion about what Plato thought instead of what he thought was Aristotle's opinion. I doubt I would have even looked at Timeaus and the commentaries on it otherwise. I think the gist of it is that some early philosophers thought that "intelligere"(understanding) did not differ from senses and Plato is listed among those. If so, then the phantasms produced by sense are understanding.
Not sure, but I'll keep reading and let you know what I find.
Regarding 2:
I sincerely don't understand why the question was asked. Aquinas has Aristotle disagreeing with Plato's purported position. Why ask me to provide passages saying the opposite?
Regarding 3:
This means "that Plato says that the soul is composed out of principles of things, he proves through three sayings [lit: through a triple saying or dictum] of Plato."
Yes I am relying on an English translation. Did I misunderstand what the Dominicans expressed in English? Or did the Dominicans misunderstand what Thomas wrote in Latin or mistranslate? As I read your translation to English "he proves through three sayings of Plato." I see that "passages" have changed to "sayings" but I don't see how that changes the meaning. There are 3 "sayings" attributed to Plato either way.
It is beside the point I'm trying to make if Aristotle "really" intended to cite himself partially or entirely for the 3 passages. The question is what Thomas thought Aristotle was saying. It seems you trying to make the case that Aristotle was referring to his own works rather than that Thomas thought that's what he was doing.
Well. boils down to an infinity thing, right? This is not complicated. Until we made it so.
ReplyDelete@bmiller, you don't control the sources, and you don't have expertise in either Plato or Aristotle. I am learning nothing from you so I will bow out now.
ReplyDeleteficino4ml,
DeleteThat's rather harsh. How are non-experts like me to learn anything if the experts dismiss their questions?
Here's my summary:
as implying that phantasms themselves were the forms of the things rather than transmitting the forms of the things to the intellect. So this was a logical implication rather than a direct quote.
He, Aquinas, took Aristotle at his word that he, Aristotle, was faithfully conveying Plato's teachings. It is true that Timaeus was a written text, but there historical evidence that Plato and the Platonists conducted lectures that were not written but only transmitted orally as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines. So it seems that some scholars would attribute the "3 passages" to Timeaus and 2 propositions from the "unwritten doctrines"
I noticed I hadn't captured all the text when I pasted it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's necessary that I fill in the missing parts.
ficino4ml,
Let me know if you want me to clarify.
@bmiller: I don't know whether it's "harsh" of you to have said twice that I seemed not to be reading Aquinas' commentary on the DA but rather, secondary sources about that commentary. Whether or not it's harsh, it's insulting. I said that I was reading Aquinas' commentary; you implicitly at least insinuated that I was lying. But never mind.
ReplyDeleteRe your last paragraph: yes, I've been suggesting that Aristotle for his second and third reference to Plato's soul doctrine may well have been using material delivered orally by Plato. I repeat, however, that there is no Greek word in Aristotle or Latin word in Aquinas that corresponds to the English "passages." Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas spoke of "three passages" in Plato. That's important for the history of philosophy, though not for modern debates about spiritual soul, because "passages" in English implies a written text. Neither Ari nor Aq claims that Plato's second and third "dicta" stand in a treatise or dialogue written by Plato - though it doesn't follow that they COULD NOT HAVE stood in a written work of Plato. That just isn't what A or A claim.
I can't make sense of your second paragraph. Nothing in Plato or in Aristotle's accounts of Plato implies that phantasms are forms.
ficino4ml,
ReplyDeleteMaybe let's start from the beginning.
You asked what source Aquinas was using from Plato in his commentary on De Anima implying that a particular concept was foreign to Aristotle's assessment of Plato's doctrines. I may have misunderstood, so please correct me that is wrong.
I've written that I thought it would be more likely for Aquinas to rely on what Aristotle thought about Plato's doctrines than some other extraneous source unrelated to Aristotle's opinion in this type of work. If that is the case, then we should examine what Aquinas says he thinks Aristotle is using as the basis for his critique on Plato's thought. Those sources I take to be the 3 passages(or whatever) Aquinas listed in his commentary.
It seems there are no direct quotes from De Anima that explicitly quote Plato as saying "understanding is by phantasia" that we can find in De Anima and so we can agree. So why can't we see if Aquinas takes Aristotle as implying all of this from the sources Aristotle claims are frome Plato due to such things as Plato's divisions of the soul, movements related to the soul, how knowledge of sensibles comes about and so forth? That's what I'm examining.
If you don't want to examine De Anima to see if this is so that's fine. It seems that you've made up your mind. I still think it unlikely that that Aquinas used a secret source from Plato foreign to Aristotle's thought.
@bmiller: I did not ask "what source Aquinas was using from Plato." I asked what source Aquinas was using. Period. Using when Aquinas stated that "platonici" were positing that understanding is phantasia.
DeleteAquinas had access to various works about ancient Greek philosophy in Latin translation. He could have relied on some compendium or other source for this claim that platonists identified understanding with phantasia.
He could not have gotten that conclusion from any work of Aristotle available to us, because nowhere does Aristotle say that people who we could call "platonists" identified understanding and phantasia. In DA 3.3, Aristotle discusses phantasia. He does not say there that Plato or any other platonist identified understanding/intellect whatever with phantasia.
It does not matter what you think off the top of your head is likely or unlikely. You have to start with the texts we have, lacunose as they are, and build an argument upon them.
And you really need to stop the slurs upon other people's intellectual endeavors if you want to remain in dialogue. You just said, "If you don't want to examine De Anima..." I have published on the De Anima. What gives you the right to suggest I don't want to examine the DA? It's what we've been arguing about.
Really, I have other work that calls, of greater priority than posting on this blog. I will continue to dialogue if you want serious dialogue. I don't need to respond further to people who call my integrity into question.
ficino4ml,
DeleteHe could not have gotten that conclusion from any work of Aristotle available to us, because nowhere does Aristotle say that people who we could call "platonists" identified understanding and phantasia.
It is clear that you don't understand the point I'm trying to make since I have been agreeing with you for days that Aristotle did not explicitly write those words, but that it could be deduced from De Anima as Aquinas seems to state. If you wanted to refute my actual theory I would expect you to try to show me from the text of De Anima how this could not be so and why Aquinas was wrong.
These 2 quotes of yours so close together made me smile:
It does not matter what you think off the top of your head is likely or unlikely.
And you really need to stop the slurs upon other people's intellectual endeavors if you want to remain in dialogue.
I have been told I am not an expert, can't properly read English or need to learn Latin (that or the Dominicans need to), I am teaching you nothing, have been instructed (not asked) to answer 3 questions, told "don't elaborate" and so on. I admit your your version of not slurring other people's intellectual endeavors is a bit distracting, but oh well.
§ 47. Now this opinion rests on the principle already mentioned, that like is known by like. For it seemed to Plato that if the soul knew all things, and if Identity and Difference were fundamental principles, then the soul itself must be constituted of Identity and Difference; in so far as it participated in ‘Identity’ the soul, he thought, knew the ‘identical’, while so far as it participated in ‘Difference’ it knew the ‘different’, i.e. material things. Hence the actual process of the soul in knowing things. For when it gathers things together under genera and species, then, said Plato, it manifests Sameness or Identity, but when it attends to accidents and differentiations he finds in it Difference. That is how Plato in the Timaeus understood the soul as made up of principles.
Here Plato implies that the soul knows sensible/material things. Since sensible things are material, then part of the soul must be material due to the principle that like is known by like. How then does an external sensible object come to be known by the soul?
@bmiller: the short answer is that according to Plato, sensibles are not cognized by the soul by means of knowledge but by means of sensation and opinions formed from sensation. Phantasia comes in here as a mixture of sensation and opinion.
ReplyDeleteSee Aristotle's report of Plato's intellectual formation: "from youth he became first an associate/student of Cratylus and the Heraclitean beliefs (doxais), that all sensible things are always in flux and there is no knowledge (episteme) about them, and these [sc. positions] he took up in a similar way later on." Metaphysics 987a33-36.
Plato speaks haphazardly about knowledge of things in our embodied world, but when he is theorizing, he draws a sharp distinction between intelligibles, which are eternal, always the same, and are the objects of knowledge (episteme, noesis), and sensibles, which change and are the objects of sensation and doxa.
When Aristotle says that "Like is cognized by like" in DA, he is talking about both intelligibles and sensibles. For phantasia to be the SAME as understanding (the latter being a form of knowledge), phantasia has to do the work that understanding (intelligere) does. What is true of A must be true of B if A is identical with B. Not all that is true of intelligere is true of phantasia, since the latter is a faculty of forming mental pictures. We abstract form from phantasia, but phantasia is not the form; it presents "data" to our intellect, which abstracts the form.
So I am still not seeing a basis in P or Ari for the claim in Aquinas that the platonists held that understanding is phantasia. If you read the Timaeus you'll see the stark distinction that Plato makes there between cognizing intelligibles and cognizing sensibles.
A problem is the vagueness of 4th century vocabulary about cognition. Ari finally comes to use "krinein/kritikos" in ways that come close to our "cognize," which a term of wider extent than "know."
ficino4ml,
ReplyDeleteRegarding your 4th paragraph. Plato lists 4 types of cognition of the soul. Understanding, scientific knowledge, opinion and sense. Since "simple understanding" is something like intuition, then I would agree with you if Aquinas would not be using the terms regarding this type of understanding. (although Plato allows for divinely inspired phantasms)
When Aristotle says that "Like is cognized by like" in DA, he is talking about both intelligibles and sensibles.
I think the quote I posted says the same thing doesn't it (aside from the fact that it is referring to Plato at this point)? It says the soul "knows" the sensibles apart from the intelligibles. What is it that is known if it is not the intelligible?
We abstract form from phantasia, but phantasia is not the form; it presents "data" to our intellect, which abstracts the form.
This is Aristotle's theory. Is it Plato's theory too? Where can I find that?
@bmiller, adding: From what Aquinas says in ST 1a 84 a.6 c, it sounds as though the saint would only want to conclude that for Plato, understanding/intellect (intelligere) is like or analogous to phantasia, not that it IS phantasia.
ReplyDeleteST 1a 84.6 c: Aq states that Plato posited intellect is an immaterial power, virtutem, not using a corporeal organ in its act (cf. q. 75. a.3). Then Plato posited that sensation, sensus, itself is a spiritual power, vis, unchanged by sense objects, but the sensory organs are changed by sensible objects, and from the organs’ change, the soul is excited in a certain way so that it forms species [likenesses (?)] of sensibles in itself. Aq quotes Augustine as saying the body does not perceive, but the soul perceives through the body, using it as a messenger for forming in itself what is announced from outside. For Plato, Aq says, intellectual cognition does not proceed from sensible [cognition], nor does sensible cognition proceed totally from sensible objects, but sensible objects excite the sensible soul toward sensing, and similarly the sensus excite the intellective soul toward understanding, intelligendum. When he goes on to show how Ari’s theory of knowing differs, Aq says that Plato posited that intellectual operation is caused in us by the sole impression of certain higher things, i.e. Forms. Aq says that for Ari, the active intellect by a kind of abstraction makes intelligible in act those phantasmata received [by the possible intellect] from sensible objects.
In Plato's dialogues, it's not denied that we cognize sensible objects. Socrates talks about how it's not controversial that he's holding up three fingers (Republic), or about counting how many fingers there are (Hippias Major). What's controversial, Socrates says, are questions like, is one finger equal to another? Those kind of questions force us to reason in a way that leads to Forms -- the Form of Equality, for example -- so that perceiving sensible things can "summon" us to reason about intelligibles. But that's not an admission by Plato that perceiving three fingers is an instance of episteme in any proper sense.
The only reason I can imagine for the statement in In I DA that platonists were posting that understanding is phantasia is Plato's frequent use of visual imagery to refer to the act of knowing a Form. He'll talk about the F Itself being grasped by the eyes of the intellect, as blazing forth to us, etc. But that's metaphor. It's not use of phantasia as a technical term synonymous with the technical terms episteme, noesis, etc. of which "intelligere" is a Latin rendering.
So I remain in the dark about Aquinas' source in the intro to his DA commentary.
ficino4ml,
ReplyDeleteI'm posting this before I can see that my last post was available but I thought this information is important to shed light on Thomas's reasoning.
ST First Part Question 84 article 4:
I answer that, Some have held that the intelligible species of our intellect are derived from certain separate forms or substances. And this in two ways. For Plato, as we have said (Article [1]), held that the forms of sensible things subsist by themselves without matter; for instance, the form of a man which he called "per se" man, and the form or idea of a horse which is called "per se" horse, and so forth. He said therefore that these forms are participated both by our soul and by corporeal matter; by our soul, to the effect of knowledge thereof, and by corporeal matter to the effect of existence: so that, just as corporeal matter by participating the idea of a stone, becomes an individuating stone, so our intellect, by participating the idea of a stone, is made to understand a stone. Now participation of an idea takes place by some image of the idea in the participator, just as a model is participated by a copy. So just as he held that the sensible forms, which are in corporeal matter, are derived from the ideas as certain images thereof: so he held that the intelligible species of our intellect are images of the ideas, derived therefrom. And for this reason, as we have said above (Article [1]), he referred sciences and definitions to those ideas.
If he is correct about Plato's theory, then for the soul, the act of participation is the act of understanding is the act of imagination. For sensible objects that is.
@bmiller: yes, there is some relevant material in this part of the Summa.
ReplyDeleteEarlier when I had written, "We abstract form from phantasia, but phantasia is not the form; it presents "data" to our intellect, which abstracts the form," I was assuming Aristotle's theory.
As to ST 1a 84.4, the doctrine Aquinas attributes to Plato does not seem to me to say that intelligere IS phantasia. Aquinas starts in c. by saying that Plato is one of those who posited that the intelligible species/forms of our intellect proceed from certain separated forms or substances. Later, as you quote, he says, explicating Plato, that the intelligible species of our intellect are certain likenesses of Ideas/Forms flowing from them. All this seems to rule it out that phantasia, a mixture of sense data and belief/opinion/judgment (doxa) is identical with intelligere. Because intelligere has forms as its object, not mental pictures of objects; "he referred knowledges (scientias) and definitions to forms/Ideas." As you quoted, Aquinas says that for Plato, "participation in/of the Form/Idea comes about through some likeness of the Idea itself in the one who participates in it." Plato isn't saying that participation in the Form comes about through likeness of the physical object on what we'd call our mental screen.
But I think Plato would want to say that through likenesses of objects on our mental screen we eventually come to reason our way to "recollection" of the Form.
I think the last sentence of your last post shows that it's not true that for Plato, intelligere just is phantasia, because you added the qualification, "for sensible objects that is." But to be identical with intelligere, all that is true of intelligere must be true of phantasia. That seems not the case. A restriction of a faculty's objects to sensibles rules it out that said faculty can be intelligere.
@bmiller: adding, I just happen to be rereading Plato's Theaetetus, and in 185 is a passage relevant to the question, is understanding phantasia? Socrates and Theaetetus agree that there are some things that the soul considers through means of sensory data, "by means of the capacities of the body," but other things that the soul "considers by means of itself, itself by itself." That latter group includes "being and not being, likeness and unlikeness, the same and different, and also one and any other number... odd and even..." etc. I.e. these are abstract concepts, not matters of mental pictures. It wouldn't seem on Plato's theory that we employ phantasia when we consider abstract concepts with the mind by means of itself.
ReplyDeleteSo Theaetetus 185 strikes me as supporting the view that for Plato, not all is true of phantasia that is true of intellectual acts.
ficino4ml,
ReplyDeleteSo Theaetetus 185 strikes me as supporting the view that for Plato, not all is true of phantasia that is true of intellectual acts.
I don't think the passage from the commentary necessarily has to be read as "all understanding is imagination". Especially since the context of the passage in question is discussing the intellect wrt the senses.
I've learned quite a bit. May be ready to read the new book now.
@bmiller, I've learned a lot, too, by going over these things in more detail.
ReplyDeleteWe may well not agree about Aquinas' statement that the "platonici" were positing that "intelligere" is phantasia. I suppose the forms of the verb "to be" in this paragraph (vel sit phantasia ... esse phantasiam) are either the "is" of identity or the "is" of predication implying something weaker, like class inclusion, on the order of "running is locomotion." There we mean, it's a type or species of locomotion. And there is the "is" of constitution, e.g. "the USA is the 50 states." I would suppose that if Aquinas didn't mean the "is" of identity, he would have so indicated, e.g. "intelligere, vel sit phantasia quaedam," understanding either is a certain phantasia... I remain unconvinced that by "intelligere" Aquinas means "have a mental impression of a sensible object," since in the previous paragraph (In I DA 2.17) he distinguishes between passions of the soul, which can't be experienced without a body, like becoming angry, and an operation of the soul like understanding, which is an operation of the intellect. (We've talked before about how Aquinas sees the possible intellect as receiving impressions from sensibles, and the active intellect uses them to understand.)
Maybe the fluidity of the word "understand" in English is a problem in construing Aquinas' reports of Plato. If you describe a red chair in your living room, I can say, "Yes, I understand that the chair is red." For a number of reasons, Plato would not admit this as a case of "understanding" in the sense of episteme in his theory.
Anyway, cheers, and down the road, if this stuff comes up in Feser's new book, maybe make an "off topic" report in a thread that will be current by that time.
It seems Aquinas distinguishes 2 types of understanding in his commentary. If you do a search on "simple understanding" in the commentary link you will see what I mean.
ReplyDeleteLater.
Hmmmm...are there two types of understanding? I don't think so. While there are numerous beliefs, those are only beliefs, based on Interests, Motives and Preferences (IMPs).
DeleteContexts matter to those who suscribe (ascribe?) to them. But, as a practical matter, they don't matter to those who don't.This is the distinction...
Hi Paul,
DeleteThe discussion regards Plato's theory of understanding not whether that or any particular theory is right or wrong.
@bmiller: I don't see a way to search for phrases in that linked Isidore site. Putting a phrase in quotations marks gets zero hits via the CTRL-f box.
ReplyDeleteIndex Thomisticus gives 303 cases of "intelligere" in Aq's commentary on the DA. Can you specify where he distinguishes two types of understanding?
I used the browser find function .
ReplyDeletehttps://isidore.co/aquinas/DeAnima.htm#13
gets you to where you can search the entire commentary by that method.
6 instances spread throughout so it would be tedious to try to list all the places. Let me know if that doesn't work and I will try to list.
I found the six instances, thanks.
ReplyDeleteThe Isidore website translates "intellectus" as "simple understanding." The Greek for "intellectus" in the Aristotle original is "nous." Nous in Plato and in Aristotle is the highest cognitive faculty. It does not even reason discursively, as does "episteme" ("scientia" in the Latin). That's why in Metaphysics Lambda, the first unmoved mover is described as "noesis noeseos," "thinking of thinking." Nous does not operate upon mental images.
Nous is a cognitive faculty far above phantasia, because it grasps intelligible unities.
Aristotle's remarks on phantasia, which Aquinas discusses in C 648, align with Plato in that both thinkers allow that phantasia can be false. Knowledge/understanding in Plato and Aristotle by definition cannot be false; a false cognitive condition is by definition not knowledge.
The six instances of intellectus translated as "simple understanding" by the Dominican translator are not instances of phantasia.
ficino4ml,
DeleteYes. That's the point.
I take it that the act of understanding is different when the One is understood, (something like a mystical experience) than when a particular object is being understood, by imagination. Imagination being the process of bringing the intellect to be the form of the intelligible object and so knowing the essence of that object.
So the mode of understanding depends on what is to be understood and therefore the context in which the term is used makes a difference.
@bmiller: I think you are still being unduly influenced by the vagueness of the English word, "understanding." In Aquinas' own thinking, phantasia is not "intellectus," or understanding/intellect. Phantasia can err, for example; intellect does not err. That's in many places. What is in phantasia is understood only in potency, but what is in our intellect is understood in act, as the active intellect abstracts form. That means that the content of what's in phantasia is not yet understood/intellecta. Aquinas holds this already in In Sententias: "a phantasm [i.e. product of phantasia] is not the proximate and proper object of intellect (intellectus), since it is intelligible in potency, not in act; but an understood (intellecta) species is its [intellect's] object per se." In 3 Sent d. 31 q. 2 a. 4 ad 5. What is understood in potency isn't yet understood. The species understood in act is the form of the possible intellect, not the phantasm, SCG II.59.8. The species understood (intellecta) in act is comparable to the phantasm just as the species visible in act is comparable to the colored thing that is outside the soul, SCG II.59.10. Phantasms through the light of the active intellect become intelliGIBLE [my emphasis] in act, so that they can move the possible intellect; not however so that they may be understood (intellecta) in act, because they are one with the possible intellect, SCG II.59.14. Phantasms move the possible intellect; they are not understood in act, SCG II.60.8. And so on.
ReplyDeleteSince Aquinas' own theory, based on Aristotle, does not allow that phantasms are understood in act, that means something has to be done to their presentations by the active intellect to make their content understood in act. So I don't think Aquinas would be saying without any explanation that understanding is phantasia or that phantasia is the faculty by which we know essences, as you suggested above.
I don't have anything more to say on this topic, but I am glad to have been stimulated to go into it more deeply by our discussion.
ficino4ml,
DeleteI guess I didn't make myself clear.
I was referring to Plato's theory as understood by Aquinas (via Aristotle). Not Thomas' theory. You proved that he, Aquinas, used different latin words to describe the Platonic "simple understanding" of the Form directly as opposed to becoming away of the Form indirectly by way of sensing something and identifying it as some type of thing (rather than just a particular).
Plato allows for "simple understanding", scientific knowledge, opinion and sense. All of these are gradual ways of knowing with "simple understanding" being the most perfect and the other less perfect.
The quote from ST First Part Question 84 article 4: above shows that Aquinas took Plato to equate "non-simple" understanding with imagination, but not perfect understanding.
"Through a glass darkly"
@bmiller: the reason I went into Aquinas' doctrine of the relation of intellect to phantasia is because we are trying to attach senses to the various "cognition" words that Aquinas uses when he describes earlier philosophers' theories.
DeleteAs to this of yours: "Plato allows for "simple understanding", scientific knowledge, opinion and sense. All of these are gradual ways of knowing with "simple understanding" being the most perfect and the other less perfect." ... These are not all ways of KNOWING for Plato. Only the first two are ways of knowing, though all four are ways of cognizing. In a whole slew of dialogues, Plato hammers home the point that opinion and sensation are not knowledge: opinion/judgment because it can be false; sensation because it lacks propositional content. In the passage from DA in which Aristotle lists the four cognition words that you cite, Aristotle does not say that they are all levels of KNOWLEDGE for Plato. Ari says that things "are judged" by intellect, scientia, opinion and sense. Judging does not imply knowing, since judgments can be false.
I already replied about ST 1a 84.4. Compare Aquinas' commentary on Ari's DA, III.8 717. There Aq says that the Platonists posited that the proper object of intellect is the "quiddity" of a thing, which is separated from the thing, existing outside of / beyond (extra) sensible things. Nowhere I know does Aquinas report that Platonists posited a "simple understanding," the objects of which are separated Forms, as over against a "non-simple understanding" equated with imagination, the objects of which are similitudes coming from sensible objects. He says in 84.4 that Platonists held that the intelligible species of our intellect are similitudes flowing from the Forms. Phantasia is a faculty for similitudes that derive from sensation not from the separated Forms. So the understanding (intellectus) reported of the Platonists in ST 1a 84.4 is not phantasia.
@bmiller, adding: I did find some places where Aquinas himself uses the term, "intelligentia simplex." At SCG I.59.2 it looks as though he defines simple understanding as understanding that is immediate, not involving composition or division. So working through a syllogism would not be simple understanding. That's consistent with the way Aquinas uses "intelligentia simplex" in his commentary on the De Anima: "for speculative understandings (intelligentiae) have an end, namely, reasons / reasonings (rationes), for they all terminate in some reasons: which reasons either are a definition, namely, in "simple understanding," or a demonstration, namely, when it puts together (componit) and divides. But primary demonstrations proceed from first principles that are certain, and they have in some way as an end a syllogism or conclusion." (In I DA 8.119). At 126 Aquinas contrasts simple understanding, which is a state of quietude, with a syllogism, which is like quietude only when it reaches the conclusion.
Deleteficino4ml,
DeleteSo the understanding (intellectus) reported of the Platonists in ST 1a 84.4 is not phantasia.
I think we agree on this point, but it seems you think we don't.
Let me put it this way:
The "understanding" reported of the Platonists in ST 1a 84.4 is phantasia, but that "understanding" is not the "simple understanding"/intellectus of direct apprehension of the Form.
Back to ST First Part Question 84 article 4:
for instance, the form of a man which he called "per se" man, and the form or idea of a horse which is called "per se" horse, and so forth. He said therefore that these forms are participated both by our soul and by corporeal matter; by our soul, to the effect of knowledge thereof, and by corporeal matter to the effect of existence: so that, just as corporeal matter by participating the idea of a stone, becomes an individuating stone, so our intellect, by participating the idea of a stone, is made to understand a stone.
This is my take:
I see Trigger and somehow come to understand that Trigger is a "per se horse". Both A's agree with Plato in this. Both A's agree with Plato that phantasms/imaginations are somehow involved in this understanding. The A's disagree with Plato in the precise mechanism that phantasms play in this act of understanding. Plato considered this act to be imagination (per Aquinas as we agree) while the A's claim that imagination, the phantasms, are a conduit of the actual form of the horse to the active intellect.
If the term "understanding" is restricted to "simple understanding" where "simple understanding" means the intellect knowing the undivided form of something, then phantasms would play absolutely no role in "understanding" full stop. But if that is so, then how can both A's and Plato affirm that the intellect knows the "per se horse" when the person sees Trigger.
ficino4ml,
DeleteThanks for references this morning.
I must have posted after you and before the posts were allowed to pass through.
They make sense to me and it also appears to me that all 3 philosophers agree on the different levels of certainty of understanding related to each level.
@bmiller: yes, we're agreed about what Aquinas calls "simple understanding." Without going back to check references, I am surmising that it corresponds to what Aristotle calls "nous."
DeleteWe differ on applying the English word "understanding" when describing Plato's theory of phantasia and its role in our cognition of sensible objects. But the whole question becomes messy, because it's highly controversial whether or how much Plato changed his "Two Worlds" epistemology later in his career so as to allow for knowledge of sensibles.
According to the Two Worlds epistemology of dialogues like Republic or Timaeus, we don't cognize about Trigger by "understanding", i.e. nous or episteme. That's because there is no episteme of sensibles in Plato's Two Worlds epistemology. We cognize sensibles by perception and judgment/belief (doxa). This is because sensibles are always changing, but knowledge of F acc to this theory is of what is always F and of what does not admit not-F.
Perhaps the above is well known to you. But then, it still seems a problem, how Aquinas, knowing this about Plato, can say that the platonists held that understanding is phantasia.
I found a passage in Aquinas' Quaestiones disputatae de anima, 15. co. What he says about Plato's theory is consistent with the view that in the body, we do not gain understanding without phantasia. It is not consistent with the view that understanding IS phantasia. Aquinas takes Plato as teaching that the soul requires sensible things to understand, i.e. phantasia is necessary for understanding (in our embodied state) but is not the same as understanding. The passage is too long to post here, but you can find it on Isidore:
https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/QDdeAnima.htm#15
It's worth nothing, too, that Aquinas thinks of phantasia "as though it is a kind of storehouse of forms received through sensation" ST 1a 78.4 co. It is not the faculty by which we abstract and reason using those forms. So I'm not seeing why Aquinas would say at the beginning of his DA commentary that phantasia for Platonists WAS understanding and not simply that Platonists made it necessary for understanding. Aquinas elsewhere distinguishes that without which we can't have F from F itself.
ficino4ml,
DeleteWe differ on applying the English word "understanding" when describing Plato's theory of phantasia and its role in our cognition of sensible objects.
I can't say I agree or disagree with this statement since I don't know how you are applying it.
Do you hold that there is no act of understanding (full stop) going on when Plato (per Plato's theory) sees Trigger and his intellect knows Trigger is a "per se horse"?
Thanks for that link.
The way I read it is that for Plato the soul naturally understands Forms but that understanding is impeded/darkened by the body. So the embodied soul does not understand Forms. The embodied soul comes to remember/understand Forms when the senses rouses it to remember/understand. I assume that the way that "rousing" is accomplished is via the phantasms that accompany sensual perception (also called imagination). So, no imagination = no phantasms = no rousing = no understanding. The un-embodied soul does not need imagination to rouse it because it already has the Forms, so phantasms are not necessary for the soul in that state since it is already in a state of understanding. No act necessary.
As an aside, I've read somewhere that Plato used (what we call) understanding ambiguously and perhaps on purpose.
@bmiller: I agree with your second-to-last paragraph, and what you recall in your last paragraph is in line with a view held by many. The way Plato uses knowledge words when he isn't theorizing about knowledge muddies the waters.
DeleteIn Plato's theoretical Two Worlds epistemology, there's the basic thesis, which I mentioned a while ago, reported by Aristotle, that Plato held that there is no "episteme" of sensibles. Episteme means knowledge, but it often suggests understanding in the sense that understanding is of systems of things.
Plato also uses "nous", intellect or mind, and "noesis," which is the activity carried on by nous. I think it's clear that this corresponds to Aquinas' "simplex intelligentia," which we've been calling simple understanding. Episteme as Aristotle reports what seems to be Plato's later though would correspond to what Aquinas talks about as intelligentia that uses composition or division, i.e. the process of reasoning step by step rather than gaining an immediate grasp of truth via simple intelligentia.
Both of those kinds of intelligentia have universals or forms as their objects, not sensible particulars. We agree that for these guys, one gains intelligentia by performing mental operations on mental images, i.e. on phantasmata or imaginationes.
I think Plato would say that he knows Trigger is a horse, but his theory would not allow him to say that he knows facts about Trigger by means of nous or episteme. That's because "is a horse" is not always true of Trigger, e.g. when Trigger is dead, or in the womb. But the object of nous and episteme is without change, so that what is true of it is always true of it. Horseness is the object of nous or episteme; Trigger is the object of lower cognitive states that, in Plato's theory, don't count as nous or episteme (intelligentia in Latin). So far I do not find a formulation of "non-special intelligentia" that corresponds to our cognition of sensibles.
Plato himself will slip into using his knowledge terminology inconsistently in his dialogues, as you noted. I'd say that problem lies with Plato. But in In I DA 18, Aquinas is reporting a theoretical position of Platonists. As I've been trying to say all along, Plato's theorizing doesn't allow for a formulation of "intelligere" that can cash out as phantasia, because the objects of intelligere are not sensible particulars; they're universals, either grasped immediately or via reasoning.
ficino4ml
DeleteAs I've been trying to say all along, Plato's theorizing doesn't allow for a formulation of "intelligere" that can cash out as phantasia, because the objects of intelligere are not sensible particulars; they're universals, either grasped immediately or via reasoning.
I'm having trouble understanding this. Phantasia is the act of imagination right?
So obviously an act of something cannot be the object of that something's act. Are you saying that you take A to be claiming that Plato said that the phantasms themselves were the objects of knowledge? If so, I agree that wouldn't make sense.
However, this is my take:
When Thomas says that, for Plato, imagining the same as understanding I don't understand him to be saying that the phantasms of the imagining process are what are being understood, but that the process of remembering the universal (per Plato) just is the process of imagination. Imagination bringing to mind what was already known. The phantasms themselves are incidental.
Because I started this discussion not wanting to accuse Aquinas of misinterpretation, I wondered whether he was relying on some secondary source to say that platonists held that "intelligere" is phantasia. The alternative would be that Aquinas is relying on his reading of Aristotle to get or infer that claim about platonists. That's what you have been arguing, right?
DeleteIf Aquinas is relying on Aristotle, I would think he'd use terminology in the way he thinks Aristotle used it. In his main discussion of phantasia, i.e. in DA III.3, what Aristotle says seems to me to rule it out that phantasia can BE "intelligere", though phantasia seems a necessary requirement for us to reach intelligere.
Aristotle's most general word for cognition is "hypolepsis." In DA III.3, 427b15ff, Ari gives an argument to show that phantasia is not a species of hypolepsis ("conceiving" in transl by Christopher Shields).
"Phantasia (imagination) is different from both perception and thinking (dianoia), and this (phantasia) does not come about without perception, and without this (phantasia) there is no conceiving. It is evident that phantasia is also not conceiving (hypolepsis)... [Ari goes on to say that we can produce mental pictures by phantasia at will, but forming judgments/beliefs (doxazein) is not up to us, and we're affected emotionally by judgments but not by mental pictures.] ... There are also varieties of conceiving itself: knowledge (episteme) and judgment/belief (doxa) and understanding (phronesis) and the opposites of these."
Then in 428a Ari goes on to argue that phantasia is that in virtue of which a particular image (phantasma) comes about for us, and he asks whether it can be a faculty or state by which we discriminate about truth and falsehood. Ari enumerates these faculties as perception, judgment/belief, knowledge (episteme), and reason (nous - intelligectus in Moerbeke's Latin). Ari goes on to argue that phantasia is none of these. He ends by concluding that phantasia is a motion effected by actual perception (429a).
From all this I can't see how Aquinas would think that he could apply phantasia as a technical term to what even Platonists meant by intelligere. I can see how Aquinas would say that for Platonists, phantasia is necessary for the soul encased in the body to recollect Forms, as you summarized above.
That's the best I can do! To hone in on your last paragraph, I'd say that for Plato, the process of imagination is not the process of remembering the universal but is a process prior to and necessary for the process of remembering the universal. Just as the process of perceiving is prior to and necessary in some way for the process of phantasia but is not identical to it.
ficino4ml,
DeleteThis is the quote from from Aristotle in De Anima that Aquinas is analyzing:
It is necessary indeed, but not easy, to deal with this problem. For in most cases there is, apparently, no action or being acted on without the body; as in anger, desire, confidence, and sensation in general. Understanding however would seem especially proper to the soul. Yet if this too is a sort of imagination, or never occurs without it, not even this exists, in fact, apart from the body. § 17-20
Aristotle is attributing these 2 stances to some earlier philosophers when referring to the motion of the soul.
Aquinas seems to attribute the "never occurs without it" to Plato and the "never occurs without it" to Democritus (per your link to the Question on De Anima).
If you disagree that it was Plato that held the former position, then Aristotle must have thought it was someone else's position. We are left with a different question then. Who was it?
In DA 403a8-10, Aristotle has not yet gotten around to enumerating earlier philosophers and their positions. His own view will be that understanding (noein) for humans never occurs without phantasia because we are embodied (the first unmoved mover of course does not use phantasia).
DeleteAristotle does not in 403a8-10 name any earlier thinkers who said that understanding IS phantasia. If it's anyone, it would be the early "philosophers of nature" who held that the soul is material; see next paragraph.
When Aquinas discusses DA 403a8-10 in his commentary (In I DA 2.18), as I've said many times, what he reports about Platonists is not correct. The reason he gives for the position he attributes to them shows this: "for there used to be men, such as the early natural philosophers, who said that intellect in no way differed from the senses, which would imply that it does not differ from the imagination; as indeed the Platonists were led to say" (trans. from Isidore website). This is exactly the opposite of what Plato held. Plato held that understanding does differ from phantasia. Phantasia is only necessary for understanding, and that when the human soul is encased in the body.
Either Aquinas is using a source that was wrong or he is making incorrect inferences.
Sorry. Should have been "Yet if this too is a sort of imagination" as the position attributed to Plato.
Deleteficino4ml,
Deleteas I've said many times, what he reports about Platonists is not correct.
But I've said many times what he reports is correct although implicit.
You see. I don't think either one of us is impressed with the other pointing out how many times we have restated our claims. It might be impressive if one or both of us brought new evidence to light. That is what I tried to do with the latest passage.
I understand why you would want to dismiss it, but you've given no good reason why I should accept your dismissal. Both Plato and Democritus were among the early thinkers A referred to in De Anima.
From ST First Part:Question: 84 Article: 6
I answer that, On this point the philosophers held three opinions. For Democritus held that "all knowledge is caused by images issuing from the bodies we think of and entering into our souls," as Augustine says in his letter to Dioscorus (cxviii, 4). And Aristotle says (De Somn. et Vigil.) that Democritus held that knowledge is cause by a "discharge of images." And the reason for this opinion was that both Democritus and the other early philosophers did not distinguish between intellect and sense, as Aristotle relates (De Anima iii, 3). 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.
Plato, on the other hand, held that the intellect is distinct from the senses: and that it is an immaterial power not making use of a corporeal organ for its action. And since the incorporeal cannot be affected by the corporeal, he held that intellectual knowledge is not brought about by sensible things affecting the intellect, but by separate intelligible forms being participated by the intellect, as we have said above (Articles [4],5). Moreover he 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. Augustine seems to touch on this opinion (Gen. ad lit. xii, 24) where he says that the "body feels not, but the soul through the body, which it makes use of as a kind of messenger, for reproducing within itself what is announced from without." 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 understanding.
Aristotle chose a middle course.
I'll have more from De Anima later.
ficino4ml,
DeleteI've been traveling and so may have been distracted regarding your response at June 8, 2024 at 8:38 AM.
I had asked you to clarify a statement where it looked to me that you took A to claim that Plato held phantasms themselves to be objects of knowledge.
I overlooked this statement:
If Aquinas is relying on Aristotle, I would think he'd use terminology in the way he thinks Aristotle used it....
From all this I can't see how Aquinas would think that he could apply phantasia as a technical term to what even Platonists meant by intelligere. I can see how Aquinas would say that for Platonists, phantasia is necessary for the soul encased in the body to recollect Forms, as you summarized above.
The preceding seemed to be an argument that Aquinas should be read as always using the definition of imagination that Aristotle finally concluded is the correct definition not only when discussing Aristotle but also while discussing Plato throughout his commentary. So there is no way that the act of imagination per Aristotle's definition could be construed as being the same as the act of understanding. Did I understand that correctly?
If so, then yes or course you are correct. But it doesn't make sense to me why the A's should explain Plato's theory using a definition of imagination that Plato disagreed with. They should explain Plato's theory using Plato's definition of imagination, not Aristotle's which he spent 2 chapters distancing himself from all other theories of imagination.
@bmiller: I am not dismissing Aristotle's DA 403a8-10ff. I am saying that in those lines, Aristotle does not state that any thinker held that understanding is phantasia. He proposes that position as a stance one might take. Later on, Ari talks about Plato as though Plato considered phantasia necessary for understanding. I suggested the earlier "philosophers of nature" could be those who Ari might say identified phantasia and understanding, but it's not clear that those guys distinguished perception and phantasia.
DeleteThe Phaedo passage is important for showing how the human soul while in the body "recollects" separated Forms through a process that starts with thinking about sense data. I think we're agreed on that.
In the Phaedo, Plato uses forms of the verb phainesthai in places to mean "appear," e.g. 74b, of stones or pieces of wood appearing equal or not. In 76a Socrates talks about recollecting from perceptions. So far, I don't see Plato distinguishing phantasia as a faculty different from perception.
On a standard chronology of the dialogues, the first time the noun phantasia receives pointed treatment is in the Theaetetus. (It comes up once in the Republic but only means something like "images.") In the Theaetetus phantasia is mentioned during a long discussion of Theaetetus' first definition of knowledge, episteme, as perception. At 152c1 it is treated as the same as perception because it was just agreed that appearance and perception are the same in cases like feeling the wind: it appears cold to one and not cold to another. And that's how the wind is perceived by different people.
At 161e8, Soc says that if Protagoras' theory is correct, that what appears/seems to each is so for that person, then it's futile to try to refute each other's phantasias and judgments/beliefs (doxas), since each one's will be true for that person. So here, phantasia can be true or false.
It's only in the Sophist, possibly Plato's next dialogue, that phantasia gets some theoretical treatment. At 263d6-7 it is said that thinking (dianoia), doxa (Belief/judgment) and phantasia are true or false. In 264 phantasia is the inner state, pathos, caused by perception, and "appears" is defined as a mixture of perception and belief/judgment (doxa) and can be true or false.
Plato of course may have developed further his thinking about phantasia in oral discussion. In any case, in the writings we have, Plato describes phantasia in a way that rules out its being understanding or knowledge. For one, phantasia can be false, but knowl/understanding is never false.
Do you have access to a different definition of phantasia formulated by Plato?
We've discussed DA 404b about Platonic cognitive faculties. Ari says that for Plato, like is cognized (cognosci in Latin) by like, and as we've noted, Ari enumerates four cognitive faculties. William of Moerbeke translates these as intellectus, scientia, opinio and sensus. This would be the place for Ari to say that Platonists held that intellect (understanding) is phantasia. But he doesn't say that.
I remain persuaded that in Plato and in Ari's reports about Plato, phantasia is a cognitive faculty but is not knowledge. Like doxa and perception, of which Plato says it's a mixture, phantasia can be false. So it's not knowledge, unlike understanding for P and Ari. Second, its objects are not intelligibles, though we use phantasia to move toward understanding intelligibles. If you use B to get A, B is not A.
ficino4ml,
DeleteI am saying that in those lines, Aristotle does not state that any thinker held that understanding is phantasia. He proposes that position as a stance one might take.
I don't think that it's likely, in a work where he is assessing the historical opinions on the soul, that Aristotle would fabricate a position no one held. But you're entitled to your opinion.
So far, I don't see Plato distinguishing phantasia as a faculty different from perception.
Right, but you do see here how imagination is recollection. And recollection is understanding. Can there recollection without imagination?
Plato describes phantasia in a way that rules out its being understanding or knowledge.
If that is the final word then the phantasia/remembering (and hence understanding) per Phaedo is likewise ruled out. If phantasia can never bring us humans to knowledge because it can be true or false, then not even philosophers can achieve the knowledge which they claim to be pursuing in this life and teaching to others. I doubt that this is a proper interpretation. It's more probable that Plato thinks that just assuming what first comes to mind is true while sensing something will get you into trouble.
I remain persuaded that in Plato and in Ari's reports about Plato, phantasia is a cognitive faculty but is not knowledge.....If you use B to get A, B is not A.
This confuses me. Phantasia/imagination is a process. Knowledge is the object of the process. So of course, to use an analogy, the destination is different than the trip (so yes, B is not A). I take it the A's are using understanding (hence imagination) to mean the movement from not knowing to knowing. I also take it they are not referring to understanding in the sense of understanding being the final destination of that movement.
Since are discussing Plato's theory of remembering, here is a link to Aristotle's On Memory and Reminiscence
I don't think it's controversial to point out that Aristotle thought Plato did not have a well thought out theory of how we gain knowledge of sensible things and so sought to improve on it. This piece shows how Aristotle considered "remembering" and implicitly how Plato got it wrong wrt knowledge.
@bmiller: I agree with your last paragraph. You're not going to get me to agree that Plato identified understanding (nous or episteme) and phantasia! So I don't think I have anything further to add that won't be a repetition. Thank you for the dialogue. It's good to be stimulated to go back to the sources, fragmentary as they often are when dealing with the fourth century BCE.
DeleteCheers, F
@bmiller: last night I wrote that I had nothing more to say that was not repetition. Here it is morning, and I have encountered two things.
Delete1. In his translation of Aquinas' commentary on the DA, Robert Pasnau (of whose work I think Feser approves) prints this: ". For intellective cognition either is phantasia, as the Stoics said,4 or
does not occur without phantasia. For there were some, such as the ancient natural philosophers, who said that intellect does not differ from sense. And if this were
true, then intellect would in no respect differ from phantasia; thus the Stoics were moved to claim that intellect is phantasia. So since phantasia needs a body, they said
that having intellective cognition is not special to soul but common."
Pasnau is translating the Latin Leonine edition, edited by Rene Gauthier in 1984. No library near me has it, so I can't check Gauthier's critical apparatus to see why he printed "Stoici" and not "Platonici". Stoics make more sense, though, since Aquinas himself got from Augustine the report that the Stoics held that our intellectual cognition is caused by images of bodies impressed on our minds, including from the celestial bodies (SCG III.84).
So, does that solve my worries about Aquinas' info about platonic theories of cognition?
2. No, because in the section of Aquinas' commentary on the DA that I reached today, he says that "especially the Platonists were of the opinion that being sad, happy, angry, sensing, and understanding (intelligere), and things of this sort are motions of the soul. And because any of these, even understanding, comes about through a determinate organ, and as far as this goes there is no difference between sensitive and intellectual soul..." (In I DA 10.148).
I haven't gone back yet to the Timaeus to pore through looking for some passage where intellectual cognition is said to involve a bodily organ, and I don't know what other kind of organ Aquinas could mean. The report sounds crazy, since Aquinas knows that the Platonists held that the soul is separable from the body and carries on intellectual cognition better, at least for the philosopher, without the body. Aquinas says himself, "Plato however distinguished between intellect and sensation; each of the two however he attributed to an incorporeal principle, positing that, just as understanding (intelligere), so also sensing belongs to the soul on its own (secundum seipsam). And from this it followed that even souls of brute beasts are subsisting/existing on their own." (ST Ia 75.3 c.).
There is nothing in Pasnau's translation or notes commenting on this, and he prints "Platonists" not "Stoics" in this notice about intellect's using a determinate organ.
So I am stumped for now. In the section on which Aquinas is commenting, sc. DA I 408b1 ff, Aristotle as translated by Moerbeke mentions "intelligere" along with various emotions as seeming to be motions, but he does not say anything about Platonists assigning a determinate organ to "intelligere."
@bmiller #3: in Timaeus 69c-e, Plato writes that the lesser gods that made the physical world imitated "the god" (presumably the demiurge): "having taken the immortal origin of the soul, they proceeded next to encase it within a round mortal body, and to give it the entire body as its vehicle. And within the body they built another kind of soul as well, the mortal kind, which contains within it" pleasures, pains, etc..."they provided a home for the mortal soul in another place in the body, away from the other, once they had built an isthmus as boundary between the head and the chest by situating a neck between them..." the chest gets the mortal soul w/ its parts, spirited and appetive.
DeleteSo I suppose Aquinas inferred, since the Timaeus was available in Latin, that platonists gave intellect as its determinate organ the head (brain?). He doesn't get more specific in this commentary. I.e. the intellectual part of human soul is in the head when the soul is encased in the body and is by itself when the soul is freed from the body.
So far it's looking as though it's the Stoics who Aquinas thinks were positing that "intelligere" is phantasia but that it's Platonists who, he said, assigned intellect a determinate organ.
ficino4ml,
DeleteYou're not going to get me to agree that Plato identified understanding (nous or episteme) and phantasia!
If you mean understanding as a final state and phantasia as a way of getting there, then I wouldn't agree with that either. That would be to confuse the final state with the process of reaching the final state. I am still confused whether you think this is what the claim is or not. I contend that the claim is that the act of coming to know (ie the act of understanding) is the act of "doing" imagination for Plato. Your responses seem, to me, to miss the distinction I'm trying to make.
Maybe it would help me understand better if you told me exactly how you understand Plato's theory of how the soul comes to the state of knowledge while in the embodied state other than "simple understanding". It seems you've concluded that phantasms cannot be involved since they can be false and coming to knowledge can only be true. You must be comparing the proposition that "coming to know is the process of imagination" (which is false) with some other process that is true wrt Plato.
BTW. You did prompt me to look up what the Stoics thought and reminded me about how Plato divided the soul up across the body (while embodied).
If it's interesting to you, here is another online translation of the commentary:
https://archive.org/details/CommentaryOfSt.ThomasAquinasOnAristotlesTreatiseOnTheSoul.Tanslated
It has "Platonists" rather than "Stoics". The Stoics came after Plato and adopted much of his stuff, so it doesn't seem to move the needle (for me) if both held the same views on this particular idea.
To start at the end, Kocurek's Internet Archive translation is from 1946. Pasnau's from 1999 uses the 1984 Latin text edited by Gauthier. The latter has "Stoici" not "Platonici". Since I haven't seen Gauthier's edition, I can only go on Pasnau's information that "Stoici" is the superior reading.
DeleteThere are a lot of differences between the Platonic and the Stoic theories of knowledge, stemming from the Stoics' core thesis of materialism. Their affinities with Plato lie more in ethics, AFAIK.
As to your first paragraphs, yes, understanding as Plato describes it - nous or episteme - is a threshold property, not a range property like health. As Lloyd Gerson said to me once re episteme as Plato sees it, "you either have it or you don't." In the dialogues Plato does not go into detail about how to get nous/episteme except to talk about reasoning from what we perceive and remember. The achievement of knowledge of intelligibles tends to be described metaphorically using imagery about a flash and about seeing (i.e. with the "eyes" of the intellect). You can look in the Symposium 211-212 and Seventh Letter 341-343, and for the standard breakdown of cognitive states, see the sun and Divided Line similes in the Republic 506-511. It remains mysterious how exactly we get to knowledge of intelligibles except by the "power of dialectic." But "the act of coming to know" is not "the act of understanding" for Plato, as you suggest above that it is. Before you reach the threshold of knowledge, you have at best right opinion. Knowledge in Plato is not a privileged sort of opinion (i.e. it's not "justified true belief") because the objects of opinion/belief are not intelligibles cognized directly; they are images of intelligibles.
I can't in a combox set forth all I think is true about Plato's theory of knowledge. I sign on to your prior observation that there is a lack of sufficient clarity in Plato's presentation, and that Aristotle sought to improve upon it.
ficino4ml,
DeleteThere are a lot of differences between the Platonic and the Stoic theories of knowledge, stemming from the Stoics' core thesis of materialism. Their affinities with Plato lie more in ethics, AFAIK.
But I don't think they differ that much in the concept of Phantasiai
The founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, suggested that the soul is imprinted by the senses much in the same way as a signet ring imprints its shape in soft wax;[2]
This is the exact analogy that Plato (and Aristotle) used years before Zeno. In fact the article seems to show he shares the opinion of his 2 predecessors in that phantasiai need to be examined before they rise to the level of knowledge rather than opinion.
But "the act of coming to know" is not "the act of understanding" for Plato, as you suggest above that it is.
How do you think the "the act of coming to know" is different than "the act of understanding"? In the former case one ends in knowledge. What does one rest in in the latter case if not knowledge?
Regarding your third paragraph.
It still looks to me that you are talking about a final state on the one hand and the movement to the final state on the other.
This refers to a state.
"As Lloyd Gerson said to me once re episteme as Plato sees it, "you either have it or you don't." "
And this refers to how to get into the state.
"In the dialogues Plato does not go into detail about how to get nous/episteme except to talk about reasoning from what we perceive and remember."
I can't tell if this still is your objection or not.
"If you use B to get A, B is not A."
Can you please clarify?
BTW, I think "reasoning from what we perceive and remember" is the "understanding" that Aquinas is referring to in the disputed passage.
Yes, if you use B to get A, B is not A. The process of coming closer to nous/episteme is not the state of nous/episteme. The final state is not identical with the movement to the final state. Not all that is true of your travel to Cleveland is true of your being located in Cleveland.
DeleteI suggest that since Pasnau, no mean authority, accepts based on Gauthier's editorial work that the genuine reading in Aquinas' commentary is "Stoics" not "Platonists," we not think that the question anymore is, why did Aquinas say that Platonists held that understanding is phantasia. It looks as though Aquinas did not write that. Nothing else in his commentary or in Aristotle's DA states that Platonists held that understanding (intelligere/ νοεῖν, ἐπίστασθαι) IS phantasia. So I am thinking that our discussion has become moot.
ficino4ml,
DeleteOnce again I am not clear regarding your original concern (and if it is still a concern) about the commentary's assertion, here:
And yet, on closer consideration, even understanding would not seem to pertain to the soul alone. For either it is the same as imagination, as the Platonists thought, or it does not occur without the use of imagination
Is it still your claim that the author (whoever it was)was using the word "understanding" in the sense of a final state rather than a process and "imagination" as the movement from "not understanding" to "understanding"?
If so, I agree that, taken that way, it would not make sense, but I think it would make sense if "understanding" were taken in the sense of a process in the same sense of imagining.
From what we've discovered regarding phantasia and how it is related to memory and knowledge in ancient Greek philosophy then it seems reasonable for not just Plato to have considered the act of imagining to be essential to understanding but Aristotle and the Stoics (and later schools also from what I've read).
In the platonic tradition, cognitive capacities are divided in two ways:
Delete1) between rational and non-rational capacities
2) between knowledge and cognition that is inferior to knowledge.
Vocabulary for cognitive capacities is not employed consistently throughout the tradition, but for a rough breakdown:
1) rational capacities: nous ("simple understading," intuition in the sense of immediate grasp of truth), dianoia (discursive thinking, connected to sciences, epistemai) and doxa (belief/judgment). non-rational capacities: phantasia, perception
2) knowledge: nous, episteme, dianoia. not knowledge: doxa, phantasia, perception
Later Platonists treated doxa as the lowest rational capacity and phantasia as the highest non-rational capacity. Phantasia sometimes was described almost in the same way as doxa, and I noted earlier that Plato says phantasia can be true or false.
In any case, phantasia is far below nous and episteme/dianoia in platonic epistemology.
Neither nous nor episteme/dianoia is a "process" that includes mental manipulation of mental pictures. Different levels of knowledge in platonism are all "above" the threshold that divides knowledge from cognition that is not knowledge. Knowledge in Plato does not have sensations or sensory presentations as its object. Your phrase, "if 'understanding' were taken in the sense of a process in the same sense of imagining," is a false premise within Platonism. The soul works with images and mental impressions at a stage of cognition lower than knowledge.
ficino4ml,
DeleteYes, if you use B to get A, B is not A. The process of coming closer to nous/episteme is not the state of nous/episteme. The final state is not identical with the movement to the final state. Not all that is true of your travel to Cleveland is true of your being located in Cleveland.
After re-reading your response, it seems you did answer "yes" to the question about the commentator making the mistake of confusing processes with a final state.
Here is why I think that doesn't make sense:
The phrase in question is in the context of movements of the soul and whether those movements are exclusively of the soul or the soul/body combination.
This is Aristotle, not Aquinas (or whoever):
It is necessary indeed, but not easy, to deal with this problem. For in most cases there is, apparently, no action or being acted on without the body; as in anger, desire, confidence, and sensation in general. Understanding however would seem especially proper to the soul. Yet if this too is a sort of imagination, or never occurs without it, not even this exists, in fact, apart from the body. § 17-20
So if "understanding" is to be read as a final state, it is Aristotle that is confusing processes with a final state and his commentator(s) apparently don't notice and make the same mistake that Aristotle makes. It is hard for me to believe that not only did Aristotle made this blunder but Aquinas (or whoever) made the same blunder. Especially since the topic is movement (not a static state) and "understanding" can be read in that sense.
"For in most cases there is, apparently, no action or being acted on without the body"
These "actions" include anger, desire, confidence, sensation with only the "action" of understanding being in question as to whether it belongs to the soul alone or the combination of body and soul.
I've seen no reason to think there was any confusion on the part of either the author or the commentator and clear reason to reject the "confused" interpretation.
I don't have any more to say. Thanks for the exchange.
ficino4ml,
DeleteRegarding a different assertion:
Neither nous nor episteme/dianoia is a "process" that includes mental manipulation of mental pictures.
I wonder how you think Plato sought to educate his students from a place of "not knowing" to "knowing" without using imagery. The entire "cave" narrative paints a picture of how one comes to truly know by invoking "mental pictures" in Glaucon in the story and in us by reading Plato's work:
Socrates - GLAUCON
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
Language is fascinating, isn't it? Avez vous une mal de tete? Oui, nous avons les mals de tete. Tout les temps, je pense.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your great service to the Church and to the perpetuation of an authentic Thomism. May God reward you.
ReplyDelete@bmiller: "It is worth noting..." lol. My typing is worth nothing.
ReplyDeleteficino4ml,
ReplyDeleteThis may interest you. From Phaedo:
See sections 73C-75b+
The images produced by the senses bring us to remember our knowledge of universals. So the movement from not knowing to knowing either is imagination or does not occur without imagination. It is not clear here, to me, if Plato considers imagination the same as sensation or something different.
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