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Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
I'm starting a series of threads on what I hold to be the short-comings and problems with Thomism as a philosophy. Thoughts and comments are of course welcome (I anticipate a lot of wrangling over interpretative issues!).
The first issue is epistemological and concerns the Aristotelian notion of the phantasm and its role in cognition of singular. On a simplified account - Stump for one contests it - Thomists hold that all cognition of particulars involves, or occurs through the medium of, a mental image, a 'ghostly trace' left behind by a sensitive intuition. Readers will immediately recognise a reference here to Hume's account of 'Ideas and Impressions', and more importantly his 'Imagism'.
Imagism, the view that a 'thought' or 'idea' comprised of a mental image, was one of the most catastrophic notions in modern philosophy; though some e.g. Leibniz and Descartes pointed out its folly from the beginning it held sway over a great many philosophers, including those who in other respects roundly rejected the Psychologistic Positivist (by this I mean British Empiricist) accounts of cognition e.g. Frege, who in works such as 'The Thought' and Foundations of Arithmetic stresses the seperation of the cognitive process from the logic-ideal objects which are cognised, yet still thinks of said cognitive process in a quasi-Imagistic fashion. All of the absurdities of Wittgenstein's philosophy e.g. the seeds of Logical Positivism and Behavourism, stem from that man's holding throughout his career to an Imagistic 'Picture-Theory' of propositions.
Fortunately Imagism has by and large been vanquished. Philosophers, agreeing with Wittgenstein's criticisms of what he took to be private cognition (when we realise that he equated private meaning with Imagism Wittgenstein's prima facia absurd remark that if God were to look into our minds then even He could not tell that about which we were thinking begins to make sense) and unwilling to embrace Behavourism, gradually came to rediscover the notion of Intentionality and with that buried the last bloody fragments of Humean psychology. Indeed it should - here comes the phenomenological evangelism - be remembered that Edmund Husserl, one of the first modern philosophers to make Intentional analysis central to philosophy of knowledge, had been vigorously attacking Imagism since the time of his first major work, The Logical Investigations. Most of us here will be familiar with Edward Feser's lucid summaries of but some Imagism's fatal flaws.
All well and good. The Neo-Scholastics had been saying similar albeit in a more watered down way ever since the beginnings of the Thomist revival. However it turns out these criticisms cut too deep for the old school Aristotelian and confine at least a large portion of his epistemology to the midden along with Hume. To know of an object, to think of an object, to intend an object is not to have an image of it before one's mind. One can no more form an image of Socrates' Wisdom Trope than one can of the universal Wisdom - even with overt sense object instances the case is that same: if, without announcing the nature of such action, God were to put before my mind to images of instances of the colour Purple of which I was aware, say the purple of Caser's mantle and the purple of Montague Summers' Lenten socks, then I would not be able to tell them apart. For this and more the old Aristotelian notion of the particular being represented by a mental image becomes untenable.
This is not say our capacity to construct and interpret mental images is not an important element in our cognition, it is: regardless of the ultimate correctness or incorrectness of the Empiricist account of universals given above there's no denying the fact that constructing such images is one of the first ways humans become aware of non-actual or at least non-present possibilities. The role of Logical Picture building in providing 'strong' justification for modal claims is a topic of truly formidable importance that we cannot pursue here. It would be safe to say though that the cognitive processes, the web of intentional acts that underpin such an activity, involved in deliberate image construction are specific types of their own above and beyond 'general' cognition, no matter how closely they may be linked in with it. I would urge all who are interested in this subject to check out Husserl's Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory.
To conclude: the failure of this aspect of Thomist psychology does not threaten Thomist metaphysics as a whole: it has no bearing on Natural Theology and little on Philosophy of Nature. Even within the sphere of psychology its effects are limited (one might make the case that it challenges the Thomist view of animal cognition - I doubt this is the case though and don't really care if it was). Thomists would do well to look to phenomenological and Scotist accounts of cognition to enhance their own.
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
DanielCC wrote:
[E]ven with overt sense object instances the case is that same: if, without announcing the nature of such action, God were to put before my mind to images of instances of the colour Purple of which I was aware, say the purple of Caser's mantle and the purple of Montague Summers' Lenten socks, then I would not be able to tell them apart. For this and more the old Aristotelian notion of the particular being represented by a mental image becomes untenable.
Sorry, I'm not following your objection here. What is the problem for Thomism supposed to be? (Why would Thomism require that we be able to distinguish between the purples of two different particular objects in a context that expressly involves their being abstracted from those objects?)
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- DanielCC
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
[E]ven with overt sense object instances the case is that same: if, without announcing the nature of such action, God were to put before my mind to images of instances of the colour Purple of which I was aware, say the purple of Caser's mantle and the purple of Montague Summers' Lenten socks, then I would not be able to tell them apart. For this and more the old Aristotelian notion of the particular being represented by a mental image becomes untenable.
Sorry, I'm not following your objection here. What is the problem for Thomism supposed to be? (Why would Thomism require that we be able to distinguish between the purples of two different particular objects in a context that expressly involves their being abstracted from those objects?)
Beacuse my 'ideas' of those purples are not identical to images of them? That example isn't necessary though (as in if there's a problem with that example I don't see how it effects the overall point about cognition of the singular not being a matter of a mental image) so we can drop it if unhelpful.
EDIT: actually that example is just like an inverted version of Hume's Missing Shade of Blue isn't it only with instances rather than kinds?
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
I'm a little confused by your objections. First you say, "Thomists hold that all cognition of particulars involves, or occurs through the medium of, a mental image, a 'ghostly trace' left behind by a sensitive intuition." But then you move on to criticise (rightly) "the view that a 'thought' or 'idea' is comprised of a mental image".
Fair enough criticism: I am not necessarily denying that mental images play a role in cognition, only that they place the semantic representational role in the case of particular thought Aristotelianism assigns to them. In short I am denying the claim that a mental image can stand for/be the idea of anything be it particular or universal. If you are claiming that it doesn't assign such a role
There seems a clear difference between the Thomist view that thought requires mental images (which I find very plausible), and the imagist view that thought is reducible to mental images (which I think is nonsense). But you seem to ignore this difference, claiming that the fact that "my 'ideas' of those purples are not identical to images of them" somehow stands against the Thomist view - surely the Thomist could agree, but nonetheless insist that you cannot think about the colour purple without envisioning purple.
In short, aren't you reading imagism into Thomism, rather than "recognising a reference"?
Well some Thomists claim that animal cognition solely consists of phantasms do not they? Of course it is a leap from the claims A: animal cognition is of particulars and B: animal cognition consists of phantasms as bearers of meaning to C: human cognition of particulars consists of phantasms as bearers of meaning, though most Thomist accounts of human particular cognition gesture in this direction.
I would deny that mental images are necessary for thought in the sense Thomism claims (this is not to be taken as a denial of the claim that knowledge begins with experience only that experience becomes knoweldge via preservation as a form of picture). That mental images come before our minds either through the passive process of association or the active processes of recollection or construction is of course true, though this is not equivalent to assigning them the aforementioned role as bearers of meaning. As a statement of psychological fact your purple example is true though it holds just as easily for the universal purple or for an angel or for God as it does the particular - due to the associative sediment which accompanies our learning processes we have form these habits though the images involved are contingent and inessential.
Edit: In short I claim that whatever roles mental images may have they are not doorways through which we intend objects be they universal or singular. Interesting article links to follow once I return to a PC.
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
Beacuse my 'ideas' of those purples are not identical to images of them?
As Alexander has already noted, Thomism doesn't say they are. Thomism also happily affirms that you can abstract a formally identical "purple" from two objects without collapsing them into one object.
Or did you intend the "object" of the mental image to be the abstract color purple itself (rather than either or both of the two purple beings, or either or both of the two formally identical but numerically distinct instantiations of purple)?
EDIT: actually that example is just like an inverted version of Hume's Missing Shade of Blue isn't it only with instances rather than kinds?
Can you elaborate? (I know the Missing Shade of Blue argument; I just don't know how your example is an inverted version of it with instances rather than kinds.)
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
Threatened Articles!:
Thomas Aquinas on the Nature of Singular Thought
(Very interesting article about cognition of particulars in general)
Aquinas and Searle on Singular Thoughts
This is the one I had originaly meant to find - enfuriatingly though there appears to be no version of it up online.
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
I admit the colour example is probably more trouble than it was worth. Here's a more modern way of putting it: our thoughts of particulars too are determinate in a way no image can be. The purpleness trope of Caesar's mantle is a determinate entity and our intending it is a determinate process just as much as our intending the universal Purple. No image can stand as a semantic substitute for either - in fact it's arguably worse in the trope case since of their very nature tropes are unique, whilst as qua instances of universals standing for universals any image may do (this is essentially what Russell held in contrast to Berkley’s weak and persistent gripes about general triangles).
As Alexander has already noted, Thomism doesn't say they are. Thomism also happily affirms that you can abstract a formally identical "purple" from two objects without collapsing them into one object.
Or did you intend the "object" of the mental image to be the abstract color purple itself (rather than either or both of the two purple beings, or either or both of the two formally identical but numerically distinct instantiations of purple)?
The latter provided we keep in mind that both these purples are ontological distinct entities (which share an identifcal universal) from the substance to which they are necessarily bound. I wouldn't have used the word 'abstraction' since most Thomists at least from what I've read reserve it for perpection of universals.
Can you elaborate? (I know the Missing Shade of Blue argument; I just don't know how your example is an inverted version of it with instances rather than kinds.)
I can though I'm not sure this example is very helpful. The Missing Shade argument says we can know the identity of a colour type, Shade X (though Hume would deny this Shade X is clearly a universal since he's clearly speaking of a point on the colour spetrum and not particular instance of colour), without being able to call to mind an image of it, an embarrasment if one is to take ideas as images. My inversion is to say that if our idea of particular colour instance e.g. Socrates' whiteness is an image then merely by having that image* we should be able to know that particular's determinate nature.
*Setting aside the fact that our image itself is likely a trope and thus cannot be identifical or represenative of said other whiteness trope.
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
The latter provided we keep in mind that both these purples are ontological distinct entities (which share an identifcal universal) from the substance to which they are necessarily bound.
Okay, I think that's the problem and I therefore agree that the color example isn't helpful to you here. Thomism wouldn't agree that the two purples are "ontological[ly] distinct entities" in their own right; the ontologically distinct entities in your example would be Caesar's (purple) mantle and Montague Summers's (purple) Lenten socks. Purple considered in isolation is already an abstraction from such entities, and what the two entities have (relevantly) in common is that in this respect they ground and "generate" the same abstraction.
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
The latter provided we keep in mind that both these purples are ontological distinct entities (which share an identifcal universal) from the substance to which they are necessarily bound.
Okay, I think that's the problem and I therefore agree that the color example isn't helpful to you here. Thomism wouldn't agree that the two purples are "ontological[ly] distinct entities" in their own right; the ontologically distinct entities in your example would be Caesar's (purple) mantle and Montague Summers's (purple) Lenten socks. Purple considered in isolation is already an abstraction from such entities, and what the two entities have (relevantly) in common is that in this respect they ground and "generate" the same abstraction.
Okay. One quick question on this though: would not the Thomist say they - the purple instance and the substance - were distinguished via a minor Real Distinction i.e. ontologically distinct entities which could not be really separated*? I always assumed it would be a paradigmatic case of the Real Distinction not entailing seperability (Scotists will call Formal here). Husserl called non-separable parts Moments and took them as ontologically distinct entities, the relations between which (and the universals of which they are instances) formed prime examples of a posteriori necessity/’material necessity’ e.g. colour presupposes spatial extension yet is not identical to it.
*Yes, strictly speaking we have a one-sided non-seperability. The socks might very well lose their purpleness trope yet still remain in existence.
Edit: several enfuriating moments of being unable to locate either my copy of Scholastic Metaphysics or Coffey's Ontology later. Does not the Thomist take Accidents (and by extent particular Accidents) to be Realy Distinct from yet inseparable from the Substance in which they inhere?
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Re: Problems for Thomism I: Imagism and Particular Cognition
The short answer is, "Yes, I think that's correct, but that doesn't imply that the purple of a purple mantle and the purple of a purple sock are numerically identical, i.e., that the mantle and the sock literally share one attribute."