Thursday, February 5, 2009

Aristotle and Frege on thought

For reasons explained in a couple of earlier posts (here and here) the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition regards the intellect as a distinct faculty from the senses and the imagination. The objects of the intellect are concepts, which are abstract and universal, while the senses and imagination can only ever grasp what is (at least relatively) concrete and particular. Hence your sensation or mental image of a triangle is always of a particular kind of triangle – small, isosceles, and red, for example – while the concept of a triangle grasped by your intellect applies to all triangles, whether they are small or large, isosceles, scalene, or equilateral, red, green, or black. Sensations and mental images are also subjective or private, directly knowable only to the person having them, while concepts are public and objective, equally accessible in principle to anyone. Your mental image of a triangle might be very different from mine, but when we grasp the concept of a triangle, it is one and the very same thing each of us grasps, which is why we can communicate about triangles in the first place.

Nevertheless, the A-T tradition also holds that thought is always associated with “phantasms” (very roughly, mental images). This is one reason it is easy to mistake the objects of the intellect for the objects of the imagination (as empiricists like Hume do). When you think about triangles (an operation performed by the intellect), it is natural to form a mental image of a triangle at the same time (an operation of the imagination). Even a blind person who has never seen a triangle presumably forms a mental image of the way the distinctive shape of a triangle feels, or at least of the way the word “triangle” sounds. (The formation of tactile, auditory, olfactory and gustatory images, and not just visual ones, is included in the operations of the imagination.) This is unavoidable given that (unlike angels, which are pure intellects) we are tied to the senses for all our information about the world, and arrive at general concepts only by abstraction from the data of sense as mediated by imagination. And it is one of the ways in which (as I have noted before here) there is a much tighter connection between intellect and matter on an A-T view than on a Cartesian view, even though both views regard intellect as immaterial. For A-T regards sensation and imagination as totally dependent on matter.

It seems to me that the way A-T understands the relationship between intellect and imagination might usefully be compared to Gottlob Frege’s conception of thought, as put forward in his classic essay “The Thought” (though Frege himself was no proponent of A-T). By a “thought,” Frege means what contemporary logicians call a proposition, and he distinguishes thoughts from sentences. To use a stock example, the English sentence “Snow is white” and the German sentence “Schnee ist weiss” both express one and the same thought or proposition, namely the thought or proposition that snow is white. That users of different languages can assert the same proposition using different sentences is one mark of the difference between sentences and propositions. Another mark often cited by philosophers and logicians is that a proposition remains either true or false, and thus in some sense exists, regardless of whether any sentence we might use to express it exists. The proposition that snow is white was true long before English, German, or any other natural language ever came into existence, and thus before any sentence in any of these languages ever came into existence. Furthermore, like the concepts whose abstract and immaterial character is emphasized by A-T, propositions are abstract and immaterial. The proposition that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March would remain true even if the entire world of concrete material objects went out of existence. Were it to go out of existence, the proposition that there are no concrete material objects would in that case be true. And so forth.

So, propositions or thoughts (in Frege’s sense of the word) are, again, abstract, immaterial and distinct from any sentence. Nevertheless, when we entertain any proposition or thought, we always at the same time entertain a sentence. As Frege famously put it: “The thought, in itself immaterial, clothes itself in the material garment of a sentence and thereby becomes comprehensible to us. We say a sentence expresses a thought.” We never “see” propositions “naked,” as it were; they never leave the house except in sentential garb. What we grasp when we grasp the thought that snow is white is not identical with the English sentence “Snow is white,” but what we grasp is nevertheless grasped through that English sentence (if we’re speakers of English, that is – German speakers grasp it instead through the sentence “Schnee ist weiss”). This, I suggest, parallels the way in which our grasp of general concepts is on the A-T view always associated with the having of phantasms, even though concepts are not identical with phantasms.

From an A-T point of view, the reason for this is, again, that we are embodied creatures dependent on material sense organs for all our knowledge. Though we are capable of moving beyond knowledge of material particulars via intellection (which is an immaterial activity), we nevertheless require phantasms (which are material) as an aid to this activity. A dog can never grasp strict universals: Rover might have a mental image of dog food, but he does not have the concept dog food, which is (unlike any possible image, which can at most apply to several instances but not all) completely general, applying to any possible instance. We can grasp universals. But (being embodied, like the dog) we tend to entertain the mental image too in the course of doing so. Similarly, while both the dog and we can hear the sentence “Snow is white” and form a mental image after the fact of how the sentence sounds or looks, only we can associate the sentence with the proposition that snow is white, which is (to simplify things a bit) essentially just what it is for us to understand language and for the dog not to understand it. But (being embodied, like the dog) we tend to form the image of the sentence in the course of entertaining the proposition it expresses.

Just as the correlation between concepts and mental images led classical empiricists mistakenly to identify them, so too does the correlation between intellectual activity and neural activity lead materialists mistakenly to identify them. But both identifications involve a category mistake, in particular a confusion of what is inherently abstract and universal with what is inherently concrete and particular.

In his book In Defense of the Soul, Ric Machuga suggests that from the A-T point of view, the relationship between body and soul is like that between words and the meaning they convey. This requires qualification, but it is a useful analogy. The difference between “bat” as applied to a stick used in baseball and “bat” as applied to a certain flying mammal has nothing at all to do with any material difference between the two word tokens. Symbols identical in their material characteristics can convey different meanings. Furthermore, the same meaning can be conveyed by symbols having very different material characteristics, as with “bachelor” and “unmarried man.” Similarly (and as I have emphasized in earlier posts) physiological processes identical in their material characteristics can be associated with different mental contents, while the same mental content can be associated with physiological processes that are different in their material characteristics.

Properly understanding the relationship between the mental and material characteristics requires, neither the postulation of an immaterial substance (as Cartesian dualists assume) nor the positing of non-physical properties inhering in a physical substance (as property dualists hold), but rather a recognition of each of Aristotle’s four causes: formal and final as well as efficient and material (the first two of which Cartesian dualists and property dualists, no less than materialists, mistakenly tend to deny). Mental content is the formal-cum-final causal aspect of a single substance and/or action of which the relevant bodily and neural processes (including sensations and mental imagery) are the efficient-cum-material causal aspect. (This is an issue I have addressed at greater length here, and in The Last Superstition.) It is only when the A-T four-causal explanatory framework is abandoned that the correlation between intellectual activity on the one hand and mental imagery and neural activity on the other comes to seem mysterious, and tempts us with false Cartesian or materialist solutions.

13 comments:

  1. Good post Dr. Feser.

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  2. The realm of objective knowledge was a popular concept circa 1900 and Bertrand Russell wrote about "unversals" to avoid the mentalistic connotation of "ideas". He was very impressed by Meinong at the time but later took fright when he was forced into a "foundational turn" (possibly by contact with Wittenstein in his anti-metphysical stage) and insisted that all knowledge of real things had to be rooted in sense exeprience and talk of "golden mountains" had to be dismissed as nonsense.

    Karl Popper revived the line of thought that came from Brentano, Meinong and Frege with his talk of "world 3" objective knowledge.

    Some applications of the idea:
    http://www.the-rathouse.com/popobjectknow.html

    Popper's Tanner lecture on the topic. http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/popper80.pdf

    Some of the modern history in the Austrian context - Brentano, Meinon, Husserl, Heidegger.
    http://www.the-rathouse.com/EvenMoreAustrianProgram/EMAThreeAustrianStrands.html

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  3. Whoops...The Tanner Lecture.

    The html code for the Austrian strand has not been accepted.

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  4. Keep up the good work, Dr. Feser. I'm two-thirds through TLS, and, as expected, find it winsome and cogent. As for all the hubbub about the "polemical" tone, I keep waiting to hit pay dirt. I mean, sure some rebuttals are barbed, but, well, that's part of what makes for good writing and good reading.

    Regarding this post:

    1) Mortimer Adler made the point on numerous occasions that we cannot grasp our ideas directly, but only grasp the intelligible world BY our ideas. This I accept but I am looking for a better way to "get my mind around" it, since it is extremely abstract. A stab: we cannot introspect upon our ideas in an analogous way that nerves cannot "feel" themselves; in both cases, they are means by which we conceive and perceive, respectively, but not objects themselves of conception or perception. An eyeball can't look itself, but can look at a mirror to see itself, etc.

    2) Have you read Adrian Reimers's _The Soul of the Person_? (My review here: http://veniaminov.blogspot.com/2008/05/review-of-reimerss-soul-of-person.html )

    I think Reimers makes an interesting connection between Peirce's abduction and the hypothetical syllogism and the power of the intellect as a materially *mediated* but immaterially operative power to form habits based on rational desire. Standard in quo vs. in quod (?--darn my terrible Latin) argumentation, as James Ross notes in his essay on immaterial thought, but with interesting connections to Peirce's interests in science as a form of rational progress.

    Thoughts?

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  5. Hello Rafe,

    Thanks for that. World 3 is yet another of Popper's unjustly neglected ideas (neglected by "mainstream" philosophers, anyway).

    Hello Cogitator,

    Yes, your "nerves" analogy seems exactly right to me. I haven't seen Reimers's book, but I will look at your review.

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  6. Sigh, kids these days.

    http://veniaminov.blogspot.com/2009/02/always-remember.html#comments

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  7. Nice post. Slightly tangential, but I include a brief discussion of why Averroes' Aristotelianism had far more influence in Christendom than in Islam here

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  8. Ed, your blog only confirms what I have discussed with you elsewhere--that Aristotle's four causes can also be applied to speech acts. In this case, the propostional content of the speech-act would be the formal cause and the particular sentence--involving the language, the words used and how they were said or written--would be the material cause. Any speech act is an irreducible composite of (the analagous) formal and material causes. Likewise, there is an ontological hierarchy of formal cause over material cause.

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  9. Ed, have you read any of Edward Pols' work? I'm curious to know what you think of his work Mind Regained, in particular. He makes some recognizable Aristotelian moves, but also denies that he is simply 'going back' to Aristotle. He's also defended direct realism and an interesting view of free will, but it was the mind stuff that made me think of you.

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  10. Hi Dr. Feser! I really hope you can answer this, but does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in anyway undermine what Frege says or the immateriality of the intellect?

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  11. The following assertions of Professor Feser are somewhat disturbing to anyone who knows that both Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle thought that truth and falsity were in the way that intellects compose and divide the concepts (a.k.a. ideas; or forms), which they abstract from their sensory experiences of the so-called "outer world". In short, truth and falsity are in minds. Then, humans may express such mental compositions and divisions by means of some grammatical art form, in diverse languages.

    To be certain:

    AQUINAS: "On the Contrary, the philosopher says, 'The true and false reside not in things but in the intellect.' [Summa I, Q. 16., Art. 1; Sed Contra]"

    Anton Pegis who quoted from The Summa, in his Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas, footnoted Metaphysics Book V., Ch. 4., 1027b line 25, for Aquinas's quote of "the philosopher" (Aristotle). The cited line is actually in Metaphysics Book VI, Ch. 4. Quote:

    ARISTOTLE: (... by 'together' and 'apart' I mean thinking them so that there is no succession in the thoughts but they become a unity); for falsity and truth are NOT in THINGS --- it is not as if the good were true and the bad were in itself false --- but in THOUGHT;

    Aristotle also goes on to say that quote:

    ARISTOTLE: "; while with regard to simple concepts and 'whats' falsity and truth do not exist even in thought --- this being so we must consider later..." [Book IX Ch. 10 referenced by Richard McKeon] ... what has to be discussed with regard to that which is or is not in this sense. But since the combination and separation are in thought and not in things ... etc." [Metaphysics 1027b lines 27 - 30 approx.]

    So what seems to be "disturbing"? Quote:

    FESER: By a “thought,” Frege means what contemporary logicians call a proposition, and he distinguishes thoughts from sentences.

    QUESTION: From where did the term "sentences" come?

    Feser should be saying that Frege distinguishes propositions from sentences (rather than thoughts from sentences), which Frege clearly does along with Aristotle. Or, perhaps, Feser might have distinguished thoughts from propositions. For example when I think of a triangle, I see either the word 'TRIANGLE' or a 3-sided enclosed image badly drawn on an ancient green board, in an ancient school-room, in yellow or white chalk, in my mind/head. Neither the image nor the word are either true or false. Nor are my mental images of either the word (triangle) or a green-board, 2 dimensional, 3-sided object, either sentences or propositions. But they are both thoughts and images, which I have, now, expressed electronically by means of some sentences.

    So why am I disturbed by Feser's sentence above? Because there seems to be some sort of ambiguity between thoughts, propositions and sentences. Does Feser mean that "Every thought is a proposition."? or that Frege thinks that "Every thought is a proposition.", because Frege clearly does not think, along with Aristotle and Aquinas, that "Every thought is a sentence." For example:

    FREGE: In order to work out more precisely what I want to call thought, I shall distinguish various kinds of sentences. One does not want to deny sense to an imperative sentence, but this sense is not such that the question of truth could arise for it. Therefore I shall not call the sense of an imperative sentence a thought. Sentences expressing desires or requests are ruled out in the same way. Only those sentences in which we communicate or state something come into the question.

    [p. 293 The Thought: A Logical Inquiry Author(s): Gottlob Frege; Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 65, No. 259 (Jul., 1956), pp. 289-311; Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2251513.]

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    1. I am replying to myself since there is a word limit on posts. This is Part II of a 3 part post. I continue:

      Now that I have actually read Frege's translated thesis, he never seems to use the translated word proposition. Thus Feser's thesis that Frege distinguishes thought from sentences, as above. But there still seems to be the same sort of "disturbing" ambiguity among and between the terms sentences, truth and thought, with Frege. [With Feser the ambiguity was between and among propositions, sentences and thought.] Just because moral sentences, which Frege describes as "imperative" sentences, are, very arguably, neither true nor false, it certainly does not follow that they don't express thoughts. Much serious deliberative thinking went into law making "imperatives" in the past. Similarly a lot of very bad thinking goes into present "imperatives" or law making. But, according to Frege above, requote: "Therefore I shall not call the sense of an imperative sentence a thought."

      Similar to Feser, above, Frege should be saying something to the effect of: "Therefore I shall not call the sense of an imperative sentence true (or false)." given that imperatives/commands certainly express thoughts. Thus Frege is simply in error above. Apparently it wasn't his only error, given Russell's refutation of his thinking on Arithmetic. Feser continues:

      FESER: To use a stock example, the English sentence “Snow is white” and the German sentence “Schnee ist weiss” both express one and the same thought or proposition, namely the thought or proposition that snow is white. That users of different languages can assert the same proposition using different sentences is one mark of the difference between sentences and propositions.

      QUESTION: Why are the English and German propositions allegedly "different sentences"? The words are definitely different and distinct SYMBOLS. But does it follow that they are different sentences? The things which the words symbolize are identical for both German and English speakers, to wit the white stuff that falls from the sky to the ground in winter and the fact/accident that this same stuff equally reflects/scatters all colors of the visible light spectrum into both German and English eyes, symbolized as "white" by English speakers and "weiss" by German speakers. Again the same question: Why does Feser call them "different sentences"? They both would be "Alpha is Beta" in Aristotle's version of symbolic logic, or a single letter variable in modern versions of symbolic logic, courtesy of Frege, Peirce, Russell, Boole etc., etc., as so-called "atomic" sentences, where neither subjects nor predicates are symbolized. So I'd say, different symbols, but the same things and, hence, the same sentences and especially identical thought. But Feser apparently disagrees, quote

      FESER: Another mark often cited by philosophers and logicians is that a proposition remains either true or false, and thus in some sense exists, regardless of whether any sentence we might use to express it exists. The proposition that snow is white was true long before English, German, or any other natural language ever came into existence, and thus before any sentence in any of these languages ever came into existence. Furthermore, like the concepts whose abstract and immaterial character is emphasized by A-T, propositions are abstract and immaterial.

      REBUTTAL: Every proposition is a sentence. (True) Conversely, Some sentence is a proposition (True). Refute either one and I may believe what you write above (which, of course, I do not believe).

      Kevin (contd.)

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  12. This is the 3rd and final installment:

    BUT: The existential continuous substance, called "snow" by English speakers or "schnee" by others above, existed long before human beings existed and the fact/accident that it scattered all colours of the visible spectrum was certainly true. But neither snow, nor the existential attributes of snow, are any of ideas, propositions or sentences. No humans = no discursive thinkers = no speakers = no languages = no sentences = no propositions. Agreed, that thinking is as abstract and immaterial as conceptualization. But sentences and propositions are thinking made sensible by means of symbols. Hence neither sentences nor propositions are either abstract or immaterial. They are as materially sensible, and concrete, as either sound or sight to speakers/hearers or writers/readers or touch to braille "readers/writers". As Aristotle says, in On Interpretation:

    ARISTOTLE: Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images. [On Interpretation, Chapter 1. 16a lines 3 - 7 approximately.]

    So, to Aristotle, mental experiences and those things of which our experiences are the images are the same for all human beings. The symbols, whether visual, auditory or tactile, are different. But the mental experiences, images (phantasms when recalled; or existential when sensed), sensory experiences (phantasms when recalled/remembered) and things are the same for "all men" above. In short, symbols are entirely material and concrete. So, too, are the sentences and propositions they symbolize. Thus we have:-

    FESER: propositions are abstract and immaterial.

    BYRNE: propositions are concrete and material symbolizations.

    Who's in error? Who is telling the truth according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas?

    Kevin Byrne [elenchuskb@yahoo.ca]

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