Aquinas’s Distinction between Natural Being and Intentional Being

Posted by Dunstan in Cognitive Theory, Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, Metaphysics, St. Thomas Aquinas on December 11, 2009

by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB

In Aristotle, De Anima, 3, 4, 430a 3-4, one finds a discussion which argues that in human cognition, if material coordinates or material properties are somehow omitted or abstracted out (perhaps one can say “bracketed”), an identity exists between an act of understanding and what is understood.  The act of understanding possesses a spiritual or immaterial nature as does also what is understood as this refers to a spiritual or immaterial intellectual nature.  According to an editorial translation of Aristotle’s text (as this is given in Lonergan’s Verbum, p. 84, n. 118), it is said that “in the immaterial order, the understander and the understood are identical.”  Another translation reads: “…in things separated from the material, intellect and what is understood by it are identical.”  Cf. Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, trans. Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries, p. 216.  In the Latin of a translation which Lonergan gives both in “Christ as Subject: A Reply,” Collection, p. 179, n. 50 and in Verbum, p. 84: in his quae sunt sine materia idem est intelligens et intellectum.  Turning to Aquinas’s commentary, however, one finds an elaboration and specification of meaning which goes beyond what Aristotle had said when, in a more simple way, he had spoken about the presence of an identification.  Citing Aquinas’s Latin: species igitur rei intellectae in actu, est species ipsius intellectus; et sic per eam seipsum intelligere potest.  Cf. Sentencia Libri De anima, 3, 9, 724.  In a more accurate English translation than would otherwise the case if species were to be translated as “concept,” because of a real distinction which exists between an intellectual form or nature and a concept as an inner word (species and concept do not refer to the same reality), one best avers that, according to Aquinas: “the species or form of something which has been understood [referring to the intelligible nature of a given thing] is also a species or form [an intelligible nature] which exists within one’s understanding.”  An identity exists between what is being understood and one’s act of understanding (provided, as Aquinas notes, that what is being understood through one’s act of understanding is what is being truly or actually understood in one’s act of understanding). One’s act of understanding should not be understanding something else (something which is other than what one’s act of understanding should be understanding).   The introduction of a qualification in Aquinas points to a difference which opens up a discussion on what distinguishes Aristotle’s understanding of cognition from that which one finds in Aquinas and Lonergan.

In terms of the difference between Aristotle’s understanding of human cognition and what Aquinas and Lonergan understood about understanding, it is to be noted as a point of departure that, in Aristotle, a human knowledge of reality occurs through a kind of participation which gradually reaches down into the depths of a person’s soul.  If, on the other hand, knowing were to be understood as something that is akin to some kind of confrontation which occurs between an act of sense and what sense experiences in terms of some kind of datum (a datum of sense), in this kind of knowing, all knowing would occur through an externalized sensible form of extroversion.  Reality would exist as some kind of external world which one sees or contemplates.  Now, if one shifts into an Aristotelian interpretation about what happens when acts of sense are operative in a human person as a subject, one begins to get into an understanding of human cognition which begins to think in terms of identity.  On the level of sense, knowing occurs through an interchange which occurs between acts of sense and the various possible data of sense.  Aristotle would more familiarly speak about agent objects who act from without to move or elicit an act of sense in a human subject.  In any given act of sense, what is sensed exists as the term or the content of an act of sense.  In the familiar Latin phrasing which summarizes this position: sensible in actu est sensus in actu (“the sensible in act is the sense in act”).  Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 14, a. 2, cited by Lonergan, Verbum, p. 84, n. 115.  By identity at a sensible external level, a human subject begins to participate in something which is other than himself.  To a sensible degree, this other becomes part of a person’s subjective being, part of a person’s subjective life (through a form of consciousness which is characterized by acts of sense).

However, later, through an act of abstractive understanding (or “simple apprehension” as many Thomists would say), in abstracting a form from matter, at an intellectual level, a second kind of identity is experienced and known.  The inner sense or meaning which belongs to something that is other than a knower begins to live within the inner life or the inner consciousness of a knower.  The intelligible in act is the intellect in act.  Intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu.  Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 14, a. 2, cited by Lonergan, Verbum, pp. 83-84, n. 114.  At a deeper level within the human soul, at an intellectual level, a person is joined with something that is other than himself.  A sensible material identity is succeeded by an intellectual immaterial identity.

However, as questions arise which now ask if a knower knows that he or she is cognitionally joined to something which is other than him or herself and which is truly known (something which exists independently of whether or not it is being known by him or her as a knower), a species of reflection is initiated which begins to reveal that the principle of identity cannot be employed as a sufficiently satisfactory explanation for the kind of knowing which occurs in human cognition.  By itself, the principle of identity cannot explain why, in human knowing, a form of self-transcendence exists (a form of self-transcendence which unites human knowers as subjects to objects which are other than subjects but which, through knowing, are participated in by human subjects).  Admittedly, as questions arise about truth and as individuals engage in acts of inquiry which can lead to acts of judgment about the truth of a given idea or theory, through a truth that is rationally affirmed, a person is joined to a world of real things which is ontologically other than one’s being (either as simply a being or as a being who also exists as a subject).  In the reflective understanding of judgment, a second form of immaterial identity makes its presence felt.  Through the mediation of a truth, something of reality enters into a person’s soul.  In a judgment, a person knows that he or she is joined to something which exists in its own right (it is real) and that such a thing does not exist as a function of its being known by one’s activity as a knower.  The reality of something, however, which exists independently of whether or not it is being known by a knower is not to be exactly equated with the reality which comes to exist within the knowledge of a given knower.  A cognitive identity exists between a knower and what is known but this cognitive identity is not to be equated with a perfect form of identity which would exist if adverts to the meaning of an ontological or metaphysical identity.

 The distinction which exists here is a real distinction that Aquinas adverts to when, in the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 56, a. 2, ad 3, he distinguishes between the natural being of a thing and the intended being of a thing as this exists within the cognition of a knower: esse naturale versus esse intentionale. The intended being of any given thing, by its being intended, points to the intentionality or the spirit of inquiry which exists within human cognition.  A cognitive desire works through an ordered set of different cognitional acts to move a potential human knowers toward a knowledge of real objects (or real things) which are other than a given knower.  Knowing occurs through an immaterial form of appropriation which creates an identity between a knower and what is known.  However, at a more fundamental level, one cannot provide an adequate account of human knowing if one cannot speak about the role of intentionality within the performance of human cognition.  Through various forms of reflection that are intended by the questions that one asks, certain distinctions can be made which, otherwise, would not be made.  Cf. Verbum, p. 84, n. 116.  In the distinction which Aquinas draws, one finds a point of departure for the intentionality analysis which Lonergan undertakes in his Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas although this analysis is most fully done in his Insight: A Study of Human Understanding where one finds that a clear distinction is drawn between a notion of being and a concept of being.  Lonergan’s notion of being, as a cognitive intention, is directed toward knowledge of reality and this notion is to be identified with Aquinas’s esse intentionale.  

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Essence in Aquinas and Lonergan

Posted by Dunstan in Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, Metaphysics on November 10, 2009

 by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB

 
Given a certain indebtedness that one finds in both Aquinas and Lonergan toward Aristotle, one best attends to developments in meaning as regards essence if one first begins with Aristotle and, from there, move to changes that occurred in Aquinas and Lonergan.
 
In Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1017a 8-35), one finds two notions of being where, on the one hand, being refers to an affirmation which says that something is true and, because it is true, real and, on the other hand, being also refers to an attributed property where being is identified with essence (the essence of a thing).  A thing’s being or its substance is its essence.  Cf. Aquinas, Sententia super Metaphysicam, 5, 9, 885-897.  For Aristotle, being is form and form is being (in Greek,  ousia).  Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 7, 17; Lonergan, Insight, pp. 390-391.  Why this is so is because form causes being by giving being to matter within the physical or material order of things that is constitutive of the naturally existing world.  Cf. Sententia super Metaphysicam, 5, 2, 775: “form gives being, and matter receives it.”  Nothing exists apart from its specific determination through the agency of an active principle which is the causality of a form.  This form unites itself to what is able to receive it (and so some kind of passive principle is indicated).  Matter and form, in joining together to constitute an essence (or what is an essence) constitute a specific kind of being or thing, a specific kind of substance.  A “this” instead of “that,” comes into existence.  Substance is essence, the “what it is” of a given thing.  For a full explanation of the reasoning which led Aristotle to identify substances in terms of essences, see Michael Novak’s, “A Key to Aristotle’s ‘Substance’,” Substances and Things: Aristotle’s Doctrine of Physical Substance in Recent Essays, ed. M. L. O’Hara (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), pp. 188-208.  
 
However, as one shifts into Aquinas, one finds a differentiation or a shift in interpretation which effects changes in the meaning of essence.  Two points can be distinguished through both refer to changes in understanding which have to do with the meaning or nature of form.  In the first change, for a particular reason, it is argued that essences can no longer be viewed simply as substances (as a given union of form and matter).  Previously, in the history of thought, for both Plato and Aristotle, forms were seen to exist in an eternal way.  But, as the world ceased to be seen as an eternally existing thing, when it was seen as a purely contingent thing (given Christian belief in the world’s creation by God), form lost its primacy as an adequate principle of explanation.  A higher, explanatory principle was needed and, for Aquinas, this principle referred to act as an act of existence or being which is to be correlated with an act of rational judgment that affirms whether or not a proposed understanding or meaning is a true understanding or meaning: true or real because of a reduction to first principles of sense and intellect which ultimately specify an extrinsic cause which, in itself, is wholly lacking in any contingency.  Cf. Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 53.  In metaphysical terms, act of existence is to be sharply distinguished from essence or, more specifically and properly, it is to be sharply distinguished from a finite essence which refers to the essence of a contingent thing (as this exists as a union of form and common matter).  Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 54, a. 3.  Understanding a finite essence does not necessarily include understanding its being or existence.  Concrete or real being or existence cannot be caused or derived from a nature or essence (with respect to the being of contingent things) even if, admittedly, one can say that natures and essences exist in a qualified sense as hypothetical entities which have been discovered or postulated and which can be employed by minds as explanatory conjugates.  Cf. Lonergan, Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, p. 11; p. 53; p. 164.  However, an explanatory principle is not a concretely existing being or thing.  It lacks the fullness of reality which belongs to the simple existence of concretely existing things although its existence is ordered in some way toward receiving an act of being or existence, an act which is the existence of a given thing or being.  As referred or ordered toward possibly receiving an act of existence, an explanatory principle or essence exists as “either as an accident, or as an intrinsic principle of being, or as a possible being, or as a being in the mind.”  Cf. Incarnate Word, p. 165.  Hence, as an explanatory, second kind of being by which that combines with a first, explanatory being by which that exists in form, nature, or essence (cf. Incarnate Word, p. 157), an act of existence or an act of being adds something to a finite essence by joining with an essence as that by which something is to create a new situation: a being or substance now fully is or exists.  A substance or thing is thus not simply an essence.  It is not an embodied form.  It is not that by which it is but it is what is or that which is (a union which joins essence with act).  An Aristotelian understanding of substance is supplanted by a Thomist understanding which associates what something is with the fact of its being or existence.  What something is does not always refer to a nature, form, or essence.  Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 29, a. 4, ad 2; 3a, q. 17, a. 1, ad 7; q. 17, a. 2 & ad 4; Lonergan, Incarnate Word, p. 151; p. 158.
 
In a second point, while, admittedly, Aquinas retains language which says that form is the cause of being (see Aquinas, Sententia super Metaphysicam, 7, 17, 1667-1668), in other texts, Aquinas engages in an analysis which cognitionally speaks about form as the cause or mover (movens) of understanding.  It is that “by which the understanding understands” (quo intelligit intellectus).  Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85; Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 75, 13.  It is a mode or a principle of understanding: it is a causa cognoscendi.  Cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, 1, 53, 2 & 4: “though this species the intellect comes to be in act.”  It is a cognitive tool which is not to be identified with what is understood or known (the id quod intelligitur which exists as the proper object of the human inquiry and the primary object of human understanding, and which also exists outside the mind as that about which questions are being asked).  Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 56, a. 2, ad 3; 1a, q. 85, a. 2.  In contrast with form, the id quod intelligitur is an essence.  It is the quiddity or “whatness” of a material thing.  Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, aa. 7-8; q. 85, a. 5, ad 3; a. 8; q. 86, a. 2; q. 89, a. 1.  While form and essence both exist as principles of explanation, a real distinction can be drawn between them which helps us understand why a real distinction should be drawn between acts of understanding and acts of conceptualization which proceed from originating acts of understanding.  By first understanding a form, one then understands an essence.  Form exists as the quo est; it is that “by which something is” (in Latin, quo aliquid est).  Cf. Aquinas, In 1 Scriptum super libros sententiarum, d. 8, q. 5, a. 2; De ente et essentia, 4; Sententia super Metaphysicam, 5, 10, 904.  From an apprehension of form comes an initial act of understanding.  However, as acts of conceptualization proceed from prior acts of understanding, an inner word or definition is formed which unites an abstracted, universal form with a generalized species of matter which is typically referred to as “common matter.”  As Aquinas argues in one place, in moving from an act of understanding about what a human being is, one moves from an intelligibility or a form that has been abstracted from a particular instance of human beingness (from “this flesh and these bones” as this exists in a given human being).  But, in then moving to a general definition which specifies an essence (a definition which applies to all human beings whatever or however they exist), one joins a universal formal component to a material component which must refer to all possible instances of human embodiment: to “bones and flesh” rather than to “this flesh and these bones.”  Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85, a. 1, ad 2.  By an analysis which delves into the order of human cognition, form and essence are more clearly distinguished from each other through a form of real distinction which carries over into better understanding about why a real distinction exists between acts of understanding and acts of conceptualization.  Essences exist as correlatives of conceptualization; forms, of acts of understanding.
 
In the more differentiated analysis of Lonergan, essences fall into classifications which distinguish one kind from another.  Lonergan speaks about three kinds which appear to be basic (different kinds of essences being determined by different kinds of conceptualization).  Cf. Lonergan, Understanding and Being, pp. 165-168.   The humanity of a given person is not the same as humanity in general or humanity per se which, as a general property or predicate, refers to what you have if a certain species of intellectual nature is joined to a certain kind of body which is common to all human beings.  However, as should be obvious, one cannot speak about the humanity of a given human being in any kind of critical way unless one begins with a critical understanding about what is meant by humanity.  In establishing a meaning for humanity as this thus exists in a definition, one takes an abstracted form or idea and one conceives of it or one speaks about it in a way which joins it to a species of common matter.  An abstract essence refers to the kind of conception which one has if, in one’s acts of conceptualization, one attends to only those aspects or conditions which are crucial and which must be operative if, in any given instance or experience of material conditions, one is to come to an understanding which grasps a universal significance (as this is present in the apprehension of an intelligible form).  If, for instance, one attends to how one has obtained an insight into the circularity of a circle (an understanding about what is the circularity, the intelligibility of a circle), one must attend to relations which exist on a plane surface if one looks at how a center point is related to a circumference through radii that are all equal in length and of an infinite number.  Equality in length combined with infinity in number reveal an intellectual necessity (an intellectual necessity which points to a mathematical law) and this intellectual necessity explains why a circle must always be perfectly round.  Once this necessity is understood, one has grasped the nature of roundness or the nature of circularity as this exists with respect to a circle.  The common matter in this case refers to any size of circle which can be drawn or imagined to exist on a plane surface.  From any imagined circular configuration of points and lines on a plane surface, one can come to know the essence of any or all circles.  See Lonergan’s Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, pp. 31-37, for a fuller account about how one can move from images or phantasms to a self-transcending act of understanding which grounds an act of conception that is able to generate an explanatory meaning for what exactly is a circle.
 
On the basis then of an abstract essence, one can take this kind of essence and apply it to particular instances and thus, by such an application, obtain a meaning which refers to a particularized essence. In thinking about the humanity of any given person, an abstract meaning is joined with an instance of individual matter and, from the union of these two principles, one gets a meaning for specific humanity which exists as a function of these two principles in how they interrelate with each other.  The humanity of any given person always varies and differs as one moves from one person to another and, yet, the humanity which one person has is not necessarily less than the humanity which another person has.  In other words, as one moves from person to person, humanity exists as a concrete variable which changes as persons change in how they live and act.  In the transfer or shift which occurs as one moves from an abstract notion of essence to a particularized notion of essence, a reverse kind of return is made to the experience and data of sense.  However, as Lonergan notes, if one attends to what Aquinas refers to when he speaks about the formal object of the human intellect (which is being or truth) but what Lonergan identifies as a notion of being (an intention of being) which shapes and moves all human inquiry toward a knowledge of being or truth, a third kind of essence can be identified: an essence which exists in itself as a species of being.  Cf. Understanding and Being, pp. 167-168.  For examples, Lonergan speaks about “man” or “this man” and not about any kind of humanity which can exist in either an abstract or in a particularized way.  In other words, as one thinks about the finality of human understanding (as human knowing undergoes a completion which it receives when affirmative judgments are made), abstract and particularized essences becomes realities or beings in their own right (things or substances which exist in more than a conceptual way) although they do not exist as only as compositions of form and matter.  In his day, Aristotle had conceived of substances as compositions of matter and common form.  But, in the understanding which Lonergan proposes, it is now possible to identify essences with concretely existing substances (or concretely existing things). In a way, it can be said that Lonergan returns to an earlier association which one finds in Aristotle although with a key difference which refers to an isomorphic relation which exists between human judgment, as a cognitional principle, and act, as a metaphysical principle.  Essences are real; they exist as things if constituted by a material component, a formal component, and an actual component.

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40 Years Since Humanae Vitae: A Metaphysical Distinction

Posted by David Fleischacker in David Fleischacker, Marital Ethics, Metaphysics on January 27, 2009

by Dr. David Fleischacker
 
As with men, the organic and psychic life of women possesses an intelligibility that begins with the finality to conceive life.  And as in men, the lower levels are intrinsically oriented toward higher levels of intellectual, rational, volitional life, with an obediential potency to a life of sanctified grace in faith, hope, and love.
 
Before continuing with the female procreative schemes, I would like to bring some clarification to the nature of finality within the human body. This also requires a slight expansion in the notion of emergent probability as it was developed in INSIGHT, in the chapter on development (chapter 15). 
 
Schemes of Recurrence vs. Schemes of Development within Things
 
The slight expansion results from the need to make a distinction intrinsic to complex organisms between schemes of recurrence and schemes of development, both of which maintain the life of the organism.   One might think of a mature organism as a flexible range of schemes of recurrence.  This is certainly true in part.  The mature cells of the circulatory or the respiratory systems form schemes of recurrence (though many of these are only “completed” in higher conscious levels).  The respiratory system supplies oxygen and removes carbon dioxide from the circulatory system.  If oxygen decreases in an environment, the respiratory system will increase its rate to maintain the particular need for oxygen in the organism (this is also linked to neural processes).  So, the respiratory system has a “flexible” way of responding to the environment.  Likewise, the needs of other cell systems in the body for disposing carbon dioxide and increasing oxygen increase the rate at which the circulatory system operates.  Hence, as one exercises, one’s heart rate will increase (again, this is also linked to the neural system).  Then, this in turn will cause increased rates in the respiratory system. One breaths harder.  This also points to a vast flexible range of schemes of recurrence that allows us to operate in different manners in different environments.
 
However, the maintenance of our organic systems is not through schemes of recurrence.  Rather, it takes place through adult stem cell systems, which are related to these systems developmentally rather than functionally (or correlationally).  These adult stem cells possess a developmental finality that is oriented toward maintaining the organic cells systems and their ability to operate in flexible ranges of schemes of recurrence.[1]
 
In addition to maintenance however, the stem cells help to increase the flexibility of the schemes of recurrence of the cell systems. Muscle stems cells will increase their rates to adjust to greater muscle needs.[2] The circulatory stem cells will shift and expand to adjust to changing needs of the circulatory system.
 
Thus, these schemes of development (as opposed to schemes of recurrence) rooted in stem cells function both in maintaining and in increasing the flexibility of matured schemes of recurrence.[3] Complex organic systems that possess stems stem cells are thus comprised of both schemes of recurrence and schemes of development.
 
 
Returning to the Procreative Schemes of Recurrence and of Development
 
Thus the procreative system, like other organic systems, is comprised of both schemes of recurrence and schemes of development (biologists call these schemes of development “developmental pathways”).  Just as adult stem cells provide for the maintenance and increase the flexibility of adult cell schemes of recurrence, so the procreative stem cells provide for the maintenance and the increased flexibility, and the development of the human race. Thus they have a developmental relationship to that which is the conscious realization of the finality of the universe as a whole.  The procreative system thus has a magnificent horizontal and vertical finality intrinsic to it, because it has a developmental relationship to the creation and formation of adult human beings and to the fullest realization of the finality of this universe.  Adult human beings are integrations of many levels of intelligibility from inorganic and organic life through all the levels of conscious existence, and therefore the procreative system has vertical intelligibilities intrinsic to it as well.  Furthermore, human beings are “systems on the move,” which is why they are not merely single individual species defined by a non-developing set of conjugate forms, but rather, human beings are ongoing horizontal and vertical unfoldings of intellectual, rational, and volitional operations. Procreative systems therefore also possess an intelligible finality to the human person as an intellectual, rational, and volitional “system on the move.”
 
A few consequent notes on The Procreative Schemes of Development, Emergent Probability, and the Scale of Values.
 
The procreative system comes to possess one of the most far reaching intelligibilities within the order of emergent probability as a whole. Emergent probability has a general finality of increasing systematization or intelligibility and meaning, as Lonergan argues in INSIGHT, especially chapter 4, and more precisely in the later chapters on metaphysics.  The human person is the height of the increasing intelligibility of this universe, and it is elevated all the more by the fact of grace and the actuation of the capacity for self-transcendence in a love that is without bounds.  The procreative system therefore is one of the key elements that makes possible a being who is on the horizon of truth, being, and the good, and who thus comes to be the conscious realization of the finality of the universe as a whole.  This finality intrinsic to the procreative schemes of development is thus incredible.  And though it is beyond the current blog, I would like to add a pointer to the objective moral value of the procreative schemes. When one bases the horizon of the good on the horizon of the true and the intelligible as Lonergan does, then the level of intelligibility is proportionate to the level being, which in turn is proportionate to the level of objective goodness.  This elevates the procreative schemes to one of the most important schemes within this universe.
 
As I will discuss in the next few blogs, the woman’s procreative schemes are central to the emerging perfection of this universe and of the human race and all of the persons that comprise it.

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[1] The word “system” can include both the schemes of recurrence and the schemes of development. Thus, one can distinguish in these organic systems between that which is functionally related (defined by mutually related conjugate forms) and developmentally related.
[2]This is true not only for organic systems, but higher systems as well. One can think, for example, about how values are maintained in society.  Human beings are higher systems on the move, and for a variety of reasons, the way this takes place is by expansion and replacement.  The birth of the young, and their education into citizens, family members, members of culture, and religion not only maintains the life of these “institutions” but also gives those institutions a principle for greater flexibility in its mode of operation in the world and it gives those institutions the possibility of development.  In general, once someone has reached a certain level of maturity, change slows down. This stabilizes the system, and gives it endurance.  If maturation was good on the whole, then the overall life of the system will be better.  If it was a decline however, then the entire system will become less stable.  This is true in organic systems as well as in human systems.  The longer cycle of decline that Lonergan explains in INSIGHT illustrates this point.  Voegelin, in his account of ideological societies, points out that the greater the ideological structure of the society, the shorter its life.  Hence, modern ideologies, especially those that are tyrannies such as the Nazi regime, or modern dictatorships, are short lived.  Only societies increasing attuned to the “Beyond” have endurance to them.  One can point out that these same insights are found in the revelations of the Old Testament.  Societies that have apostatized will become destabilized and eventually destroyed either by an internal or external enemy.
[3]On a technical note, schemes of recurrence are grasped by combining conjugate forms (known by implicitly defined relations) and their statistical emergence and ongoing existence.  Developmental recurrences add finality to the intelligibility of how they operate.  The relationship of a stem cell and a mature cell is one of development. Thus, it is not the systematic relationship of one cellular conjugate form to another that has been actualized, but rather the relationship between the cellular conjugate forms of a stem cells and those of a mature cells, which is one of developmental finality.

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Lonergan and Aquinas: Isomorphism and Proportionality

Posted by Dunstan in Dunstan Robidoux, OSB, Metaphysics, St. Thomas Aquinas on September 29, 2008

by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB

The Thomism of Lonergan’s philosophy and theology is accepted by some and rejected by others. On the one hand, Lonergan says about himself that he spent eleven years “reaching up to the mind of Aquinas.” Some of his writings are replete with references to Aquinas. But, at the same time, others argue that something is very wrong with Lonergan’s study of human cognition (his intentionality analysis). Lonergan is accordingly often referred to as a Kantian. He is seen as a promoter of subjectivism and so, as a Kantian, it is said that, in Lonergan, no joining exists between subjectivity and objectivity. From Lonergan’s subjectivity, one cannot move into objectivity. Metaphysics has no foundation.

Now, in addressing this question, it has to be admitted that a fully adequate discussion is no small undertaking. One would have to understand Kant’s own position thoroughly before entering into a similar study of both Aquinas and Lonergan and about how the thought of all these thinkers relates. Such a project cannot be attempted here. However, in order to raise a few questions and to suggest where lines of convergence can possibly be detected, I would like to speak about Aquinas and Lonergan in terms of a number of restricted issues and topics. My presupposition will be the thesis that Lonergan’s thought is not as original as some would believe. In order to understand Lonergan’s thought, one best begins with Aquinas. While some admittedly argue that, to understand Aquinas, one best begins with Lonergan, I will argue to the converse. By reading Aquinas, one best creates conditions that will lead to a better understanding of Lonergan’s thought and a grasp of its true significance.

In Lonergan’s Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, principally in the context of a discussion which speaks about metaphysics as science, it is argued that an isomorphic structure exists between knowing and being. Or, in the words of a more traditional language, a connatural relation exists between the order of human knowing, on one side, and the order of being or reality, on the other. For every element that can be distinguished in the structure of human cognition, a correlative element can be identified in the structure of the known (a known which Lonergan refers to as “proportionate being”). Every metaphysical element is grounded in a corresponding element or act that, as individual, is partially constitutive of the knowing which belongs to human cognition. In Insight (and elsewhere), Lonergan argues against a theory of knowledge which alleges that human knowing is some kind of simple, single act (i.e., a species of intuition). On the contrary, human knowing is complex and, at times, cumbersome. It is constituted by a number or a series of different acts that have each different natures and which are all related to each other in a self-assembling pattern that is normative for human beings. Where Lonergan speaks about experiencing, understanding, and judging as three levels that succeed and sublate one another in the structure of human knowing, three correlative metaphysical components can be distinguished in terms of potency, form, and act. A critical metaphysics is grounded or established on the basis of a critical understanding of human cognition–an understanding that is arrived at through a very personal form of inquiry which emphasizes the importance of self-understanding. Begin an inquiry into metaphysics by first developing a strategy of inquiry which leads toward self-understanding.However, given Lonergan’s theory of an isomorphic relation between the structure of human knowing and the structure of what is known (which can be articulated in a much more sophisticated fashion than what is given here), let us look at Aquinas’s notion of proportionality as this relates to what he has to say about how human knowing is related to what human knowing is able to know. On understanding this notion of proportionality (as Aquinas understood it through his own acts of understanding), one can then think about it and ponder it and ask if a connatural relation exists between it and Lonergan’s theory of isomorphic relations. Is Lonergan’s theory of isomorphism a development of Aquinas’s notion of proportionality?

With respect then to Aquinas’s notion of proportionality, it should be noted that Aquinas begins with an understanding which Aristotle had had. “It is as ridiculous to say, the soul alone understands, as to say, alone it builds or weaves.” Cf. De Veritate, q. 19, a. 1. Knowing is a co-operative effort. It involves both soul and body since human knowing occurs in a being that is formed by two principles. Soul (anima) is united to body (corpus) whereby the soul takes a body and then converts it into a certain kind of body which lives and functions as a result of the soul’s causality. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 75, a. 1. The body is needed by the soul if the soul’s intellectual operations are to occur. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, a. 4. Hence, human beings exist as incarnate spirits. Anima mea non est ego. “My soul is not I.” Cf. Expositio et Lectura super Epistolas Pauli Apostoli, In II ad I Cor., 15, lect. 2, no. 924. The soul gives a form or structure to the materiality of the body in order to order the body to the soul and, from this form or structure, the knowing of the human soul derives its characteristic form or structure. Cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 83, 26. Human knowing emerges as a function of the structuring of the human soul in terms of how human beings exist as embodied beings.

Hence, given the structure or nature of human knowing, Aquinas argues that certain conclusions can be properly drawn about a relation or proportion which exists between knowing and being. As Aquinas notes in the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 12, a. 4:

A thing is known by being present in the knower but how it is present is determined by a knower’s way of being. How something knows depends on how it exists. Hence, if the way of being of a thing which is to be known is beyond what belongs to a knower, knowing such a thing would be beyond the natural power [or natural potency] of the knower.

Cognitive activity, as performed by human beings, has its own proper object (specified as an intelligibility that exists within matter). “A thing’s mode of knowing depends on its mode of being. But our soul, as long as we live in this life, has its being in corporeal matter; hence, naturally, it knows only what has a form in matter, or what can be known by such a form.” Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 12, a. 11. Between the mode of being and the mode of knowing, a proportion, proportio, or correlation can be discovered and this proportion between the mode of a subject’s being and the mode of its knowing carries over into a proportion that is reflected in the order of being or reality which is the subject matter of ontology or metaphysics.

In different texts Aquinas speaks about a proportionality in the structure of knowing. One text in the Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 96, 5 directly speaks about proportionality when it says that “the mode of a thing’s proper operation corresponds proportionately to the mode of its substance and nature.” Italics mine. And then, with respect to a proportion which exists between the order of knowing and an order or structure in that which is known, in the In 4 Scriptum super libros sententiarum. d. 49, q. 2, a. 1, ad 6, an earlier text, Aquinas refers to a proportion which should exist between the order or structure of knowing and a like order which should exist in the order of what can be properly and connaturally known. “The potency of the one knowing has to be on a level with the knowability of the thing known.” In the Super Boetium De Trinitate, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3, the same kind of point is reiterated when it said that “some kind of proportion is needed between the knowing power which exists in a knower and what is known as a knowable object.” The reason given is that “the knowable object exists as a kind of actuality within the knowing power of a knower.” Later texts in the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, a. 7; a. 8; q. 85, a. 1; and a. 8 specify how a connatural, proportional relation should be understood to exist between human knowing and what a human knower knows. A proportion or correlation naturally and properly exists between the embodiment of the human soul (the soul informing a body) and the embedded existence of forms within matter which are the proper object of human knowing. As Aquinas goes on to note in the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 88, a. 1, “our intellect in its present state of life has a natural relationship to the natures of material things,” or, more precisely, as Aquinas states it in Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 108, a. 5, “something is said to be in a certain thing by the proper mode when it is adequate and proportionate to its nature.” Cf. Frederick E. Crowe in Three Thomist Studies, ed. Fred Lawrence, p. 223, nn. 51-52.

With respect to human beings then, and also with respect to angels and God, a distinct strict proportion exists between the knowing of a certain type of subject, on the one hand, and what is being known by the same subject, on the other hand. In the context, for instance, of a strict proportion which exists between a created intellect and a created form, a created intellect can possibly come to exhaustively understand a created form but, with respect to an uncreated form, this is impossible. Cf. Lectura super Ioannem 1, 18, lect. 11, nn. 208-21, as cited by Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas Volume 2 Spiritual Master, p. 51, n. 69. Uncreated forms can only be properly and adequately understood by uncreated acts of understanding.

On the basis then of the embodiment which properly belongs to the character of incarnate human existence, given then what Aquinas says about human sensible experience and first and second operations of the human mind, Aquinas distinguishes between objects of sense and objects of intellect in a way which indicates that, for every element which exists in the cognitional order, a corresponding element can be posited in the ontological or metaphysical order. See Crowe, p. 212. While, for instance, the object of human sensible experience is an object as it exists in corporeal matter (presenting itself as a form as it exists in corporeal matter; Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85, a. 1: forma prout in materia corporali existit; [forma] prout est in tali materia), the object of human understanding is a form that has been grasped as a quiddity, essence, or “whatness” which exists in corporeal matter (cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 84, a. 7; Super I Sententiarum, d. 19, q. 5, a. 1, ad 7). In the context of inquiry, a sensible or material form, present in an image or phantasm, is first grasped by an act of sense, but it is grasped in a manner which then hopefully triggers an act of understanding that then apprehends the meaning of an intelligible form which specifies what something is. Cf. Sententia libri Ethicorum, 6, 9, 1239. Sensible form is to be distinguished from intelligible form. And then, thirdly, when a second operation of the mind begins to ask about the possible truth or reality of a given essence or form, in the reflective understanding which occurs in judgment, its term is the positing of existence or being: esse or actuality. Cf. Super I Sententiarum, d. 19, q. 5, a. 1, ad 7; De Veritate, q. 4, a. 2; q. 3, a. 2; q. 14, a. 1, pp. 208-9; Sententia super Metaphysicam, 6, 4, 1232. As Aquinas summarizes his thesis in the Super Boetium De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3:

The intellect has two operations…which correspond to two principles in things. The first operation has regard to the nature itself of a thing, in virtue of which the known thing holds a certain rank among beings, whether it be a complete thing, as some whole, or an incomplete thing, as a part or an accident. The second operation has regard to a things’s act of existing (esse), which results from the union of the principles of a thing in composite substances, or, as in the case of simple substances, accompanies the thing’s simple nature.

In a species of proportion which speaks about a correlation between the order of knowing and the order of being, acts of sense are correlated with potency (they reveal potency), acts of understanding with form (they reveal form), and acts of judgment with act (they reveal act or actuality).

However, as the ordering which exists within knowing also reveals a like ordering in the structure of reality, a mutual or reciprocal form of proportion can be specifically identified. It informs the species of proportionality which, in Aquinas, correlates every cognitional act with a corresponding metaphysical principle or element. In this specification, acts or elements within a set cannot be understood apart from each other and how each relates to the other. As every act of sense is ordered to first acts of understanding which, in turn, are ordered to second acts of understanding present in judgment, their metaphysical correlatives are also similarly ordered. Potency is ordered to form and form to act. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 54, a. 3. Everything which exists in material things exists as a composite of potency, form, and act and, conversely, every act of knowing is a composite of experiencing, understanding, and judging. Each act or element exists as it is because each is mutually ordered to all the other acts or elements. Citing some of Aquinas’s own words, “what is intrinsically ordered to something else ‘cannot be understood apart from that other’.” Cf. Super Boetium De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3.

In turning then to how Aquinas goes on to speak about this ordering, in the Sententia super Metaphysicam, 9, 5, 1827-9, he notes that one discovers relations of mutual proportion among metaphysical principles through correlative relations of mutual proportion which also exist as differentiations within the structure and process of human cognition. The difference, for instance, between potency and act is illustrated and paralleled by the difference between sleeping and being awake. Capability or potentiality is distinguished from an act or operation which refers to a realized state of being. Since, cognitionally, for instance, the form of a material thing can only be understood (or apprehended) if it is detached from a material thing through an act of abstraction which functions by way of an interaction between sense and intellect, the form of a material thing (as a metaphysical principle) is understood as something which cannot exist apart from its union with matter (although the form of an immaterial thing can be understood apart from any union with matter). Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 79, a. 7. An awareness of transitions in human cognition reveals a metaphysical principle which speaks about transitions that move from potency to act. Hence, by way of application in metaphysics, it can be said that potency stands to form as the organic body to the soul, the will to habitual righteousness, the possible intellect to habitual knowledge, the ears to hearing, and an eye to sight. Cf. De Potentia, q. 1, a. 1, Sententia super Metaphysicam, 9, 5, 1827-9; Lonergan, The Incarnate Word, p. 140, an unpublished manuscript translated 1989 by Charles C. Hefling, Jr. from the Latin of the De Verbo Incarnato. Form is act (first act) in relation to potency, but in relation to an act of being or operation (second act), it is a second species of potency. The first act of form is not to be confused with the second act of being or operation. By extension, in the relation which exists between form and act, it can be said that “as sight stands to actually seeing, [the faculty of] hearing to actually hearing, habitual knowledge to actually understanding, habitual righteousness to actually willing rightly, soul to actually living,…form stands to act.” Cf. Incarnate Word, p. 140. Through a reflection that is grounded in cognitive self-consciousness, metaphysical principles can be identified and all can be understood in terms of how they are all ordered to each other.

By way of conclusion then, Aquinas’s notion of proportionality derives from Aquinas’s experience of himself as a thinking, knowing subject. The subjectivity of his understanding is seen to participate in a wholly natural way in an objectivity that his understanding is naturally directed toward. No inherent, unbridgeable gap necessarily exists between the subjectivity, on the one hand, and objectivity, on the other. The subjectivity of a thinking, knowing being is joined to the objectivity of what can be known through a person’s subjectivity. The human spirit moves into objectivity through its self-transcending operations. Through our initial desires and aspirations, we are immediately joined to a world that is greater than ourselves. And then, by our activities which emerge as responses to what we want and desire, we can be joined ever more intimately to this same greater world which transcends our finite human existence. Within ourselves, unrestricted desires serve as a point of connection. In thinking about Aquinas’s notion of proportionality, we can rightly ask if Lonergan’s theory of isomorphism is essentially taken from Aquinas’s notion of proportionality. Is Lonergan’s theory genuinely Thomist?

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Mediated and Immediate Sublations

Posted by David Fleischacker in David Fleischacker, Metaphysics on June 28, 2008

The following thought falls under metaphysical musings.

About 14 years ago, I had written a paper for the late Fr. Stephen Happell dealing with the landscape of consciousness and the different regions and mountains where insights, judgments, and decisions take place within science and the imagination. At least that was the metaphor that came to mind in describing the layout of how various insights, judgments, and decisions relate to each other. One of the insights that had come to me at that point and has continued to grow whenever I think of higher and lower levels is how the higher directly informs a particular range of the lower, then through that directly sublated lower level, it can mediate other regions of the lower levels.

There are many examples that each of us should be able to recognize in ourselves. The farmer has insights and makes decisions immediately in relationship to certain sensate patterns, which in turn take place immediately within certain neural patterns, which in turn take place within certain biochemical and biophysical schemes. However, through the neural, biochemical, and biophysical schemes, the farmer can move muscles and turn his body, look in another direction, walk toward the barn, start the farm equipment. Within his body, these movements are mediate with respect to the conscious acts themselves. The muscle itself was not immediately part of the conscious activities. Hence, it comes to be “informed” by the consciousness in a mediated fashion.

To put this a bit more technically, Lonergan defines mediation in his essay entitled “The Mediation of Christ in Prayer” as a relationship between a property, characteristic, aspect, or feature that is immediate in one term, and mediated to another. Hence, in the case of a watch, the energy is immediate in the spring, but in the moving hands of the clock, it is mediate. Likewise in conscious things, the conscious activities are immediate in certain neural patterns, and then the features of consciousness (insights, judgments, decisions), become mediated within other parts of the body. Only mediately does my hand comes to be sublated within my conscious decision to type, but the neurons involved in this conscious decision are sublated immediately.

This is not much different than how through the immediate power and movement of the muscles in the legs, movement of the whole body takes place, hence movement is mediated in the rest of the body. However, in this case, I am simply focusing on how a lower level can become either immediately or mediately sublated into higher levels. This all takes place within a single unity-identity-whole.

Hence our entire biochemical, cellular, neural being becomes sublated into conscious life, but it does so either immediately or mediately. And there are other parallels in all living beings (beings that possess various types of self-mediating capacities).

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