Adler—Intellect: Mind Over Matter

Recommended reading— 
Intellect: Mind Over Matter, by Mortimer J. Adler

A most prevalent myth in our time says that we think with our brains. The truth is rather, we do not think with our brains, but we do not think without them.

In Intellect: Mind Over Matter, Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, in his exceptionally clear and easy to read style, clarifies and answers many questions about the mind. He “argues that in conflict between ancient and modern approaches to the study of mind key insights have been lost that bear on contemporary psychology. According to Adler, the intellectual powers of the human have either been denied or neglected, or they have been reduced to the mind’s sensitive powers—sense-perception, memory, and imagination. With that goes a further reduction of all psychological phenomena to the action of sense-organs and the brain.

“Adler’s thoroughgoing critique of both of the above reductions restores the intellect to its primacy in the understanding of the mind. He explains the intellect’s uniqueness, its immateriality, the role it plays both in our sense-experience and in our knowledge of an independent reality, and how it functions as the source of meaning in our use of language.

“In addition to providing an understanding of the intellect’s cognitive and appetitive powers, Adler discusses our intellectual virtues and vices—our use and misuse of the intellect, as well as the consequences we suffer from its total neglect. It is only by our intellectual powers, Adler affirms, that we transcend matter and live in a world of ideas beyond the reach of the senses.”

To give you some idea of the topics discussed in this book, I have reproduced the table of contents:

I. Basic Issues and Question
1. Coming to Terms
2. Is the Mind Observable?
3. Is Our Intellect Unique
4. Is our Intellect Immaterial?
5. Artificial Intelligence and the Human Intellect
6. Extraterrestrial Intelligence

II. Serious Mistakes
7. About Philosophy in Relation to Common Sense.
8. About What Exists Independently of the Mind (Including a Note About Reality in Relation to Quantum Mechanics)
9. About What the Mind Draws from Experience
10. About How One Realm of Meanings Underlies the Diversity of Languages
11. About How the Plurality of Cultures Springs from the Unity of Mind

III. The Powers of the Intellect
12. The Triad of Powers, Habits, and Acts
13. Cognitive Power and Its Acts: Conception, Judgment, Reasoning
14. Appetitive Power and Its Acts: Willing and Choosing

IV. The Use, Misuse, and Nonuse of the Intellect
15. Intellectual Virtue and Vice: Passions
16. The Neglect of the Intellect: Sloth

■ Amazon

Brother Benignus: The Nature of Knowledge

4. Form and Knower. St. Thomas makes an equation not only between knowability and form but also between the power to know and form. When I know a thing, I have in some manner become that thing; that is, I have received its form. We have already become acquainted in preceding chapters with what it means for matter to receive a form. When some matter receives a substantial form, it becomes physically the substance determined by that form; thus, the food which I eat becomes my flesh. When some matter receives an accidental form, it is physically altered to that accidental determination; for example, it becomes hot or red or square. But my mind does not turn to flesh when I know what flesh is, nor does it become flat I know what a plane is. Therefore, it must be concluded that it is not the matter in me that assumes the forms of the things which I know. In other words, I do not, in knowing things, assume their forms in my capacity of a composite substance; if I did I would literally turn into the things which I know. I receive these forms into my form as such, and consequently the modification wrought in me is not material. (8) From this St. Thomas concludes that only those beings whose forms are to some degree free from their matter are capable of having knowledge. “Free from matter” does not here mean separated from matter; certainly substantial forms (i.e., the souls) of animals are inseparable from matter and yet animals have a certain degree of knowledge. Their soul may be said to be free from matter in the sense that although it can never exist or operate except in and through their body, yet its whole energy is not limited to or used up in forming and animating their own body but reaches also to the reception of the forms of other bodies in an immaterial way. Thus a kitten first possesses in itself cognitively and immaterially the milk which it is about to add to itself materially; the milk is part of the kitten’s life in two distinct way, but one of these ways, the cognitive way, is purely formal. The milk, on the contrary, can never contain the kitten formally but only materially, the form of the milk is to no degree free from matter, and consequently the milk cannot receive any purely formal determination by which it becomes something else while yet remaining itself; therefore it is incapable of knowledge. (9) 

“Knowing beings are distinguished from non-knowing beings,” wrote St. Thomas, (10) “in that the latter possess only their own form, while knowing being is by nature capable of having also the form of another thing.” And by receiving the forms of other things knowing beings become those things without ceasing to be themselves.

“In beings which have knowledge, each is so determined to its own natural being by its own natural form that it is nevertheless capable of receiving of all intelligible things. And so the human soul, in a certain manner, becomes everything through sense and intellect.” (11)

5. Form and Intelligibility. Intelligibility means capacity to be understood or to be an idea. It is St. Thomas’ teaching that forms are themselves intelligible; that is to say, they are ideas, either potential ideas, when they are immersed in matter, or actual ideas, when they are free from matter. The form in anything is its idea, and this form, in the mind, makes the thing known to the mind.

“What is called idea in Greek is called forma in Latin. Whence by ideas we understand the forms of certain things existing apart from the things. Now the form of a thing existing apart from the thing can have a twofold being: it may either be the exemplar of that of which it is called the form, or it may be the principle by which the thing is known, for which reason the forms of things known are said to be in the one knowing.” (12)

When a form is not actually intelligible, this is not due to anything in itself as form, but to its mode of existence in matter. Every form existing free from matter is actually intelligible, that is to say, is an actual idea.

6. Form and Intelligence. St. Thomas goes further than this. He not only equates form with intelligibility, but also with intelligence. Every form subsisting in itself apart from matter is an actual intelligence. How far the Angelic Doctor goes in identifying form with intelligibility and intelligence is made clear by the following passages:

“Just as matter is the principle of particularity, so is intelligibility due to form. For this reason form is the principle of knowledge. Wherefore, it follows necessarily that every forM existing in itself apart from matter is intellectual in nature; and if, indeed, it subsists in itself, it will also be an intelligence. If, on the other hand, it is not subsistent but rather a perfection of some subsistent being, it will not be an intelligence, but a principle of understanding.” (13)

“If there were a box subsisting in itself without matter, it would understand itself; because immunity from matter is the cause of intellectuality, and because of this, the box without matter would not differ from the intelligible box.” (14)

“Every form subsisting in itself without matter is an intellectual substance, for immunity from matter confers intelligibility.” (15)

7. Actuality, Intelligibility, and Intelligence. This teaching of St. Thomas is no special, peculiar doctrine, but is simply a particular application of principles which he constantly employs. Creatures are ordered in a hierarchy of degrees of perfection, and perfection itself is measured by actuality of being. Primary matter is pure potentiality; and consequently the more any form of being involves materiality the more potential and the less actual it is, and the more free the form is from matter the less potential and the more actual it is. Actual intelligibility is a high degree of perfection, attained by form only when it is completely free from matter, as a form is in an intellect. Hence, every form separated from matter and received in an intellect is an actual idea. But actual intelligence, being an operation, can belong only to a substance, since every operation must be attributed to some substance. Therefore, an actually intelligible form, if it is a substance, that is, if it subsists in itself, will also be an actual intelligence; for intelligence is simply subjective intelligibility. An idea which is in a subject, but which is not itself a subject, is understood but does not understand; an idea which is itself a subject understands itself. In the final analysis intelligibility and intelligence are identical, because, as St. Thomas says so often, and as shall be explained below, “the intelligible thing in act is the intellect in act.”

~Brother Benignus, F.S.C., Ph.D.: Nature, Knowledge and God: An Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy, pp. 221-223. Bruce Publishing Co. (1947)
--------------
Notes

8. S. Theol., I, 50, 2, ad 2; Con. Gen., II, 50, fourth arg.
9. S. Theol., I, 84, 1, c.
10. S. Theol., I, 14, 1, c.
11. S. Theol., I, 80, 1, c.
12. S. Theol., I,  15, 1, c. Cf. De Ver., III, 2, c.
13. In I Sent., d. 35, q. 1, 1, c.
14. De Spirit. Creat., I, ad 12.
15. Con. Gen., II, 91.

• At Amazon

"If you want the best, readable exposition of Thomistic philosophy available in a single volume, this is it. A must-have book for anyone seriously interested in Thomism. Brother Benignus Gerrity wrote a practical masterpiece summarizing the essential elements of Thomistic philosophy, containing all the main philosophical sciences, except ethics. It contains a splendid presentation of the philosophy of nature, philosophical psychology, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural theology -- together with the necessary relevant historical context. There are other works that give exquisite analyses of parts of Thomism, but, having taught philosophy for over forty years, I do not hesitate to direct students immediately to this book as essential to their understanding of most of sound Thomistic thought in a single place. I recommend this fine work without qualification."

~Dennis Bonnette, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy

Relation of the Word to the Father

“WHAT is conceived in the intellect is a likeness of the thing understood and represents its species; and so it seems to be a sort of offspring of the intellect. Therefore, when the intellect understands something other than itself, the thing understood is, so to speak, the father of the word conceived in the intellect, and the intellect itself resembles rather a mother, whose function is such that conception takes place in her. But when the intellect understands itself, the word conceived is related to the understanding person as offspring to father. Consequently, since we are using the term word in the latter sense (that is according as God understands Himself), the word itself must be related to God, from whom the word proceeds, as Son to Father.

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Compendium of Theology, 39

• Amazon

"The gift of understanding"

"UNDERSTANDING implies an intimate knowledge, for "intelligere" [to understand] is the same as "intus legere" [to read inwardly]. This is clear to anyone who considers the difference between intellect and sense, because sensitive knowledge is concerned with external sensible qualities, whereas intellective knowledge penetrates into the very essence of a thing, because the object of the intellect is "what a thing is," as stated in De Anima iii, 6.

"Now there are many kinds of things that are hidden within, to find which human knowledge has to penetrate within so to speak. Thus, under the accidents lies hidden the nature of the substantial reality, under words lies hidden their meaning; under likenesses and figures the truth they denote lies hidden (because the intelligible world is enclosed within as compared with the sensible world, which is perceived externally), and effects lie hidden in their causes, and vice versa. Hence we may speak of understanding with regard to all these things.

"Since, however, human knowledge begins with the outside of things as it were, it is evident that the stronger the light of the understanding, the further can it penetrate into the heart of things. Now the natural light of our understanding is of finite power; wherefore it can reach to a certain fixed point. Consequently man needs a supernatural light in order to penetrate further still so as to know what it cannot know by its natural light: and this supernatural light which is bestowed on man is called the gift of understanding."

~St. Thomas Aquinas: ST, II-II, q. 8, a. 1.

St. Thomas Aquinas, by Fra Angelico.
Tempera on wood, 1340-45; Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice.

"Truth resides primarily in the intellect"

"TRUTH resides primarily in the intellect; and secondarily in things, according as they are related to the divine intellect. If therefore we speak of truth, as it exists in the intellect, according to its proper nature, then are there many truths in many created intellects; and even in one and the same intellect, according to the number of things known. Whence a gloss on Psalm 11:2, "Truths are decayed from among the children of men," says: "As from one man's face many likenesses are reflected in a mirror, so many truths are reflected from the one divine truth." But if we speak of truth as it is in things, then all things are true by one primary truth; to which each one is assimilated according to its own entity. And thus, although the essences or forms of things are many, yet the truth of the divine intellect is one, in conformity to which all things are said to be true."

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I, q. 16, art. 6.

On good will

“A MAN is not called good or bad on account of his capabilities but on account of his actions, that is, not because he is able to act well but because he does in fact act well. When a man understands perfectly he becomes able to act well. Thus one who has the habit of grammar is able to speak correctly, but that he actually speak correctly he must will it. The reason is that a habit is that quality by which a person acts when he wishes, as the Commentator says in the third book De Anima. It is obvious then that good will makes a man act well according to every capability or habit obedient to reason.

“Therefore a man is called good simply because he has a good will. However, from the fact that he has a good intellect he is not good simply but relatively good, for example, a good grammarian or a good musician. Therefore, since choice pertains to the will but opinion to the intellect, we are called good or bad by reason of choice but not by reason of opinion.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. III, Lect. VI, 451.

Aristotle, Ethica ad Nicomachum, by Gaspare da Padova.
Manuscript, c. 1470; Biblioteca Historica, Universitat de Valencia, Valencia.