The psychology of natural and supernatural knowledge according to St. Thomas Aquinas

220 Pages·2003·1.33 MB·English

by  Thomas Riplinger

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF

NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL KNOWLEDGE

ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

Thomas Riplinger

T(cid:252)bingen 2003
ii
Table of Contents
(The documents are paged separately.)

Preface pp. iv-v

The phenomenology of cognition according to Thomas Aquinas (2003)
pp. 1-37

Experiential, conceptual and intuitive moments in the knowledge of faith
(Dissertation 1967) pp. 1-167

Philosophia and sacra doctrina: New insights into Thomas Aquinas(cid:146) understanding
of the relationship between science and philosophy, sacred scripture and theology
(2003) pp. 1-11

iii
Preface

For the past 50 years I have been fascinated by the psychology of natural and
revealed knowledge. This fascination began when I was a pupil in 6th Grade and was
shown to be unconsciously an Apollinarian heretic for thinking that in Jesus the
divine nature and person substituted for the human soul. At Fenwick High School in
Oak Park, IL, my Dominican teachers introduced me to the philosophy of St.
Thomas Aquinas via an English paraphrase of Thomas(cid:146) Summa theologiae, in which
the question structure of St. Thomas(cid:146) work was replaced by the doctrinaire structure
of the commentators. The philosophical concepts used to illucidate the teachings of
revelation fascinated me: how they came to be, however, remained a mystery that
even my teachers could not explain, instead they taught us to take them on faith,
suggesting that they derived from divinely inspired intuitions given to St. Thomas.
From this fideist conceptualism, my teachers at the Aquinas Institute, School of
Philosophy, in River Forest, IL would later deliver me. From Professors Benedict
Ashley, Humbert Kane, Ralph Powell and above all J. Athanasius Weisheipl, I
learned that metaphysics is grounded in empirical natural science and that theology
is grounded in biblical narrative and biblical theology. Thus it was, that in 1967,
within a matter of weeks, I wrote my dissertation for the Dominican lectorate degree,
treating the topic (cid:147)Experiential, conceptual and intuitive moments in the knowledge
of faith(cid:148) Starting with the problematic addressed in the Modernist controversy, I
undertook first to elaborate a psychology of normal cognition as a basis of a study of
the conceptual and non-conceptual elements in the knowledge of faith and the nature
of dogma. Relying heavily on secondary literature, in particular Louis-Marie Regis
and Victor White, Karl Rahner and Eduard Schillebeeckx, I attempted to elaborate a
comprehensive thomistic psychology of natural and supernatural knowledge.
When I had finished the dissertation, I knew that I would someday have to
redo it, working this time not from secondary literature but rather from the texts of
St. Thomas himself. Since then I have been gathering materials for such a revision.
Methodologically I have learned to read Aquinas first historically in the context of
his medieval world view. But to really understand him, it is then necessary to
translate his thinking into our own contemporary scientific world view, hence the
need for an ongoing dialog with contemporary science. As a librarian in the
T(cid:252)bingen University Library for the past 25 years, I have been strategically well
placed to keep abreast of recent developments not only in thomistic studies but also
and above all in contemporary empirical cognition theory. In particular I have been
following developments in neurobiological and evolutionary cognition theory, in the
psychology of language and in the social psychology of cognition. Over the years I
have also closely followed contemporary developments in modern philosophical and
theological epistemology. The ongoing infallibility debate in Catholic theology has
led me to elaborate a theory of error to complement prevailing theories of truth. To
work through this mass of gathered materials will take several years; thus I have
decided to publish now the original dissertation unchanged. However, over the
decades I have come to see many things more clearly. These new insights have
found expression in two recent papers, which, because they lack documentation,
have not yet been published. These papers are included here to bring the dissertation
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up to date. The first paper (cid:147)The phenomenology of cognition according to Thomas
Aquinas(cid:148) attempts to synthesize for the first time all of the diverse themes discussed
by Aquinas in the course of his manifold discussions of natural cognition. The
second paper (cid:147)Philosophia und sacra doctrina: Neue Erkenntnisse zur Bestimmung
der Verh(cid:228)ltnisse zwischen Wissenschaft und Philosophie, Bibel und Theologie(cid:148)
examines the relationship between natural and revealed knowledge, showing how the
latter, for Thomas Aquinas, is firmly rooted in Holy Scripture. Thus taken together,
these two papers provide a framework reflecting the current state of my thinking on
the matters covered in the dissertation.
In conclusion, I wish to dedicate this work to my teachers in River Forest, Ill.,
Dubuque, Iowa, and T(cid:252)bingen, Germany. Without their help and encouragement, I
would never have come so far in my understanding of the mind of Thomas Aquinas.
In particular I wish to name the following professors in alphabetical order: Benedict
Ashley, Humbert Kane, Hans K(cid:252)ng, Ralph Powell, William A. Wallace, Georg
Wieland, and J. Athanasius Weisheipl.

P.S. The text of the 1967 dissertation was scanned and and then converted to WORD by an
OCR program. In this way, numerous minute typographical and format errors were introduced
into the text, which I have subsequently done my best to correct. For those errors which I
failed to notice and correct, I beg the reader(cid:146)s understanding and indulgence

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THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF !OGNITION A!!ORDING TO THOMAS AQUINAS
Thomas Riplinger

Overview

(cid:1)
1. My approach to Aquinas theory of cognition........................................................................1

2. Heuristic principles................................................................................................................1

3. The distinction between phenomenon and concept................................................................4

4. Functional concepts and definitions.......................................................................................6

5. !onsciousness........................................................................................................................6

6. Knowing with the external senses..........................................................................................7

7. Knowing with the internal senses: the concomiting and the imaging senses.........................8

8. Animal intelligence, the estimative sense and the value memory........................................10

9. Analysing an act of cognition...............................................................................................12

10. The first act of the mind, simple intellection.....................................................................13

11. Abstraction.........................................................................................................................14

12. Judgment............................................................................................................................17

13. Definition and division.......................................................................................................18

14. Reasoning...........................................................................................................................20

15 Inductive and deductive reasoning......................................................................................21

16. Verbal and non-verbal thinking..........................................................................................23

17. Everyday knowledge and science.......................................................................................25

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18. The Scientific questions and the subject/object of science................................................29

19. Truth and certitude.............................................................................................................31

20. The universal and the singular...........................................................................................33

21. A theory of error.................................................................................................................34

22. In place of a summary........................................................................................................35

Appendix: Recovering the empirical basis of Thomas Aquinas"s cognition theory 37

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THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF !OGNITION A!!ORDING TO THOMAS AQUINAS

(cid:1)
1. My approach to Aquinas theory of cognition
For some 50 years now, I have been studying the texts of St. Thomas on cognition. Over
the years periods of intensive study of the texts have alternated with periods of reflection without
reference to concrete texts and long periods in which the topic lay fallow, because I was occupied
with other concerns. These long periods of gestation gave me a distance to the texts, thus
enabling me to grasp the big picture more clearly than I did when working strictly with the texts
themselves. Thus each time I return to the texts, I am surprised to find that I understand them
better than the last time I looked at them. In what follows, I proposed to synthesize my current
(cid:1)
understanding of St. Thomas thinking on cognition without reference to specific texts, hoping
that when I retire in four years I will have the strength and ability to rewrite my Dubuque masters
(cid:1)
thesis on Thomas theory of knowledge to provide the textual basis for what I describe here.

2. Heuristic principles
From Ashley and Weisheipl I learned to read the texts of St. Thomas in the historical
(cid:1)
context of Aquinas natural science. At the same time I learned, however, that to understand
(cid:1) (cid:1)
Aristotles and Thomas natural science, one must attempt to transpose it into the natural science
(cid:2) (cid:3)
of our own day. Thus, when Thomas speaks of lumen , it is not enough to simply translate it as
(cid:2) (cid:3)
light ; we must then also call up our own knowledge of visible light as a specific portion of the
spectrum of electromagnetic radiation emitted by or absorbed by molecules constituting the
(cid:2) (cid:3)
emitter or receiver of this light . Similarly, when Thomas talks about sound, we must think of
compression waves in a medium. Again what is audible sound is only a small segment of the
spectrum of such waves. The same holds true for the other proper sensibles and for the sense
(cid:1)
organs that perceive them. In each case, we must translate Aquinas remarks into our own
science, because this is what he would do if he were talking to us today. In the text that follows, I
(cid:1)
will not attempt to analyse texts or to reconstruct Thomass own natural science background. This
work I did some 30 years ago when I wrote and partially reworked my lectorate thesis on
Experiential conceptual and intuitive moments in the knowledge of faith, This was a close textual
(cid:1)
study of Aquinas theory of natural human cognition and its application to theological cognition.
This is the text I hope to rework in the years to come. Instead I shall present here only my own
(cid:1)
interpretation of Thomas positions as transposed into the natural and social science of our own
day.
(cid:2) (cid:3)
I have deliberately entitled this text a phenomenology of knowledge according to St.
Thomas. To understand what he says on cognition, it is not enough to read the corresponding
(cid:2) (cid:3) (cid:2) (cid:3)
rational explanations he gives of cognitive phenomena, since the rational explanations he
(cid:2)
gives can blind us to the phenomena he is attempting to explain. Abstract concepts like species

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(cid:3) (cid:2) (cid:3)
impressa , intellectus agens cannot be understood properly unless they are consciously related
to the concrete phenomena they are introduced to explain. Thus it is necessary to reconstruct the
(cid:1)
phenomenology of cognition that underlies Aquinas rational analysis. Failing to do this has led
(cid:1)
baroque and modern commentators on Thomas texts to misunderstand his analysis and thus to
(cid:2) (cid:3)
construct a platonist-augustinian, metaphysical epistemology, because they failed to attend to
(cid:1)
the perceptual basis for Thomas conceptual development.
It is my conviction that, because Thomas was forced to confront the platonic-augustinian
epistemology he found in the sacra doctrina (= sacra scriptura) and thus in the church fathers, he
was thus able to see more clearly than Aristotle what natural human knowledge is about and how
natural and social science and metaphysics differ essentially from a theology contained in and
based on revelation. As St. Thomas saw it, the angelic mode of knowing corresponded by and
large to the Platonic-patristic account of cognition. By thus contrasting the angelic and the human
modes of thinking, Aquinas was able to see more clearly than Aristotle what was proper to the
human mode of knowing and what was not proper to it.

3. The distinction between phenomenon and concept
Before attempting to reconstruct a modern phenomenology of cognition corresponding to
the phenomenology of cognition Thomas himself had in mind as he posed his analytical
questions and constructed his reasoned answers, it is necessary to attend to an important
distinction. In knowledge we have to do with four distinct but interrelated realities: the knowing
person, the powers or faculties by which the person knows, the acts of knowing proceeding from
these powers and the objects known in these acts. The relationship between the knowing person
and the known object is superficially clear. In the act of knowing, the known is presented to the
knower and the knower realizes the known in a new mode of being, the cognitive mode. The act
of knowledge, however, does not proceed immediately from the knower as such; it is a composite
act involving distinct organs of the knowing human person, to which distinct powers of knowing
belong.. The act of knowing is the act of the person as far as its origin and term are concerned, it
is, however, at the same time under a different aspect, the act of the knowing potency and of its
proper organ(s). Because the outward organs of sense cognition are easily distinguishable from
one another and from the other organs of the body, we are capable of analysing their construction
and function to get a quite detailed picture of how they work. Of the so-called internal senses, we
have very little perceptual knowledge to go on. We cannot establish their exact location or their
specific organs in the nervous system nor can we analyse in detail their functions and
interworkings. We conclude to their existence by identifying diverse, more or less clearly
distinguished functional complexes, which, upon observation, indicate to us the existence and
something of the character of a corresponding organ and faculty. But -- and this is most
(cid:2) (cid:3)
important -- we cannot see the individual organ; indeed, we cannot even be certain that it is a
(cid:2) (cid:3) (cid:2) (cid:3)
single organ. By the same token, we cannot see their functioning when in act. What we see is
only the result of their working. Thus we know the internal cognitive organs and faculties not
directly but indirectly, not in themselves but only in their function, not as things but only as

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principles. Time and again, neoscholastic epistemology falls into the trap of thinking it is dealing
with things rather than functions. It is not the eye that sees (except analogically), it is I that sees
through the eye, it is not the intellect that thinks, but I who thinks through the intellect. .
(cid:2) (cid:3) (cid:2) (cid:3)
In knowing, the knower becomes the known in a special, intentional way. Intentional
existence is generally thought to be a psychological concept for Thomist. To my great surprise,
some two decades ago I discovered that it was for Thomas a physico-chemical concept which is
analogically used in his psychology. Thomas introduces the notion to explain the role of the
medium in indirect sensation. In vision, for instance, the image of the visible object is transmitted
to the eye of the beholder by the medium of light. Light is so constituted that it is able to receive
an impression of the object emitting or reflecting it and to carry this impression more or less
unchanged to the eye it affects. It is this actualisation of the medium by taking on
a physio-chemical impression of an object without losing its own identity that Aquinas call
(cid:2) (cid:3)
intentional . The same holds true for air as the medium of hearing and smelling; in both cases,
the object impresses an image of itself physio-chemically upon the medium, and this medium
transmits that image to the corresponding sense. Thus, in the medium, be it light or air, an image
(cid:2) (cid:3)
of the colored or sounding or smelling object has intentional existence.
Returning to the phenomenon of knowing, Thomas defines knowing as the presence of
the known to the knower by being formed by the knower. This cognitive unity between the
knower and the known is best seen in conscious knowing, when we reflect upon the fact that we
know. Granted, there are many acts of unconscious knowing going on all the time, whether
waking or sleeping. For instance, at the present moment as I write these lines, without my
attending to them, the tactile sense organs of my inner arms are constantly monitoring, i.e.
(cid:2) (cid:3)
knowing , the temperature and texture of the tabletop upon which they rest and automatically
they are stimulating the sweat glands in the associated area of my skin to exude moisture to avoid
overheating. Normally, I do not attend to this process; it goes on unconsciously, only when a
change takes place, e.g. when I move my arm to a neighboring place on the tabletop which is
cooler or warmer, only then do I become aware of such unconscious knowing. Even in conscious
knowing, however, we are not normally aware of which powers are acting at any one moment;
we become aware of them in actu signato (, i.e. as such, inasmuch as they are what they are) only
reflexively; in the original act of knowing they were quasi-conscious in actu exercito (i.e. as the
functional principles of the knowing act). We are most aware of our external sense powers and
their organs. We have eyes that see, ears that hear, a nose that smells, a tongue that tastes, an
epidermis that feels. We understand the function of these organs and powers spontaneously and
easily, because we can observe their functioning.

4. Functional concepts and definitions
When it comes to the internal senses and the powers of intellection and volition, we have
no clearly identifiable organ whose functioning we can observe. We can only observe the
products of these inner organs and powers, e.g. the fact that the sensations received from different

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