Infallibility, Error, and Ignorance

References

• ‘Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge,’ infra, 125–58
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• Especially because reliabilists tend to take cognitive reliability to be a sufficient condition for justification or even to reduce justification to reliability.
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• Summa theologiae Aquinas notably prefers the non-theological, Aristotelian sort of account of certain details even when a supernatural alternative is available to him— e.g., in his well-known rejection of the theories of the agent intellect and the possible intellect as separate substances (see, e.g., Thomas Aquinas [3], [ST] Ia.79.4 & 5).
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• De Anima In this paper references to Aristotle will have the name of the work spelled out followed by the number of the book, etc.; references to Aquinas's commentaries on Aristotle will have the number of the book followed by an abbreviated form of the name of the work, etc. The Aristotelian texts relevant to my purposes include a few prominent, extended passages (e.g., esp. III 6 [Aristotle (3)] and Metaphysics IX 10 [Aristotle (4)]) but also many scattered bits and pieces. And almost all these texts, long and short, were discussed in Aquinas's commentaries on Aristotle as well as cited frequently by him as he developed his own position. This vast array of sources and Aquinas's intricate weaving of his own epistemology through Aristotle's would make it intolerably distracting to try to trace the Aristotelian thread in every Thomistic doctrine. So I will only occasionally point to a relationship between them, and I will often speak only of Aquinas's position when I might appropriately have referred to Aristotle's as well. But it seems clear to me that although Aquinas no doubt thought of himself as developing an Aristotelian account, he was not merely expounding Aristotle, not even in his commentaries.
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• Aquinas , Thomas . 1990 . “ [2], I ” . In Scriptum super Sententias (Sent.) Edited by: MacDonald , Scott . Ithaca : Cornell University Press . See 44.1.2: “. a likeness of God's goodness is the purpose of all things”; see also my article ‘Why Would God Create This World? A Particular Problem of Creation’ (in Being and Goodness [] 229–49, esp. 242–3).
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• 1989 . Epistemic Justification Ithaca : Cornell University Press . As William Alston observes after summarizing the importance of skepticism in epistemology, “I do not deny that skepticism is worthy of serious and prolonged consideration, but I do deny that it must find a place on every worthwhile epistemological agenda” [], 2).
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• Metaphysics See also ST IIIa.11.2, ad 3: “the senses are given to a human being not only for intellective scientia but also for the necessities of animal life”; and ST IaIIae.31.6c, which cites the opening passage of Aristotle's (I 1,980a21–4), where human delight in the senses and especially in sight is explained by reference to their indispensable contribution to knowledge.
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• De anima See also Thomas Aquinas [11], II lect. 6, n. 301: “In mortal beings possessed of intellect, however, it is necessary that all the other [faculties] exist before it, as instruments of and preconditions for intellect, which is the ultimate perfection aimed at in the operation of nature.”
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• See also ST IIaIIae.164.2, ad 1; Thomas Aquinas [6] (DM) 5.5; Thomas Aquinas [5] (QDA) 8.
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• As for the senses' contribution to theology in particular, there is also familiar scriptural backing: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Psalms 19:1); “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.” (Romans 1:20).
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• ‘intellectus’ In this paper I will have nothing to say about the practical intellect. Aquinas's term is usually translated correctly as ‘intellect’ (the faculty), but he sometimes uses it in contexts where ‘intellection’ (the faculty's operation) is called for in English, and so I will vary my translation of it.
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.3.1, ad 2; 93.2c; 93.6c.
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• Sent. See, e.g., ST Ia.12, esp. a. 1; IaIIae.3.8c; Suppl. 92.1c (IV 49.2.1); Thomas Aquinas [4] (SCG) III.51, n. 2285. The role of intellectus as one of ‘the gifts of the Holy Spirit’ might seem particularly well-suited to bear out the fundamental claim of theistic reliabilism, but in fact ‘intellectus’ in that context refers only to a gift of special understanding regarding matters that in this life are ordinarily accessible only to faith, and so this special theological status has no bearing on theistic reliabilism as a general epistemological theory. (See, e.g., ST IIaIIae.8.1 and III Sent. 35.2.2.)
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• Flint , Thomas P. , ed. 1990 . Christian Philosophy Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press . On relationships between celestial and propositional understanding see my article ‘Faith Seeks, Understanding Finds: Augustine's Charter for Christian Philosophy’ (in [] 1–36, esp. 13–16).
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• Sent. In order of composition, II 23.2.3; Thomas Aquinas [8] (DV) 18.6; ST la.94.4.
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• De libero arbitrio Augustine [1] III.xviii.52
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• “Speculativae autem mentis, et non factivae neque practicae, bene et male, verum et falsum.” That is not quite what Aristotle says there, even in Aquinas's Latin text: See also Thomas Aquinas [16], I Peri Herm., lect. 3, n. 7, and Spiazzi's editorial note (8). For some other interpretations and applications of this line, see, e.g., Thomas Aquinas [14], VI Eth., lect. 2, n. 1130; Thomas Aquinas [15] VI Metaph. (4,1027b25–27), lect. 4, n. 1231; ST IIaIIae 60.4, ad 2.
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• Sent. On the kinds of knowledge Adam had to have and the kinds he could or must have lacked, see esp. the articles closely associated with the ones on which this discussion is based: II 24.2.2; DV 18.4; ST Ia.94.3 (”Did the first human being have scientia of all things?”). Briefly, he could not have lacked any knowledge he needed for his own welfare and the raising of children.
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• Aristotle [3], De Anima III 6, 430b27–31
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• Sent. I have chosen only the three that strike me as not only effective but also philosophically familiar. There are four objections in II including (2) and (3), five in ST, including all three of these, and fifteen in DV, including (1) and (3).
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• Cf. DV 18.6, ad 14.
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• Sent. Cf. the earlier II 23.2.3, ad 3, where Aquinas takes quite a different line, claiming that God would have intervened “so that he [Adam] would immediately have had intellective cognition of it if anyone had told him anything false as true.”
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• Cf. II Sent.24.2.3, ad 4, a fuller version of this rejoinder, and DV 18.6, ad 15, where the unmisleadable waking intellect is contrasted with intellect in sleep.
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• Sent. See II 24.2.3, obj. 1; ad 1; DV 18.6, obj. 5; obj. 11; ad 5; ad 11; ST Ia.94.4, obj. 1; ad 1.
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• Or, as Aquinas would say, of will's misdirecting intellect. On this basis someone— W.K. Clifford, for instance— might be moved to conclude that evidentialism is the will of God. See my forthcoming article ‘Evidence Against Anti-Evidentialism.’
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• ‘intelligere,’ ‘Understand,’ the standard translation for the verb is often too narrow in the context of this discussion; in such cases I will use ‘think and understand,’ or (far more often) ‘have intellective cognition of,’ instead. In translating nominalizations of the infinitive I tend to use ‘intellection.’
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• ‘scientia’ Since I ordinarily translate (if at all) as ‘organized knowledge,’ I here translate ‘ad sciendum’ as ‘to acquiring organized knowledge.’
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• For the grandest version of this line, see SCG I.1, n. 4: “The ultimate end of any thing is what is intended [for it] by its first author or mover. Now the first author or mover of the universe is intellect, as will be shown below. Therefore, the ultimate end of the universe is intellect's good. But that is truth. Therefore, truth must be the ultimate end of the whole universe.”
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• 1963 . Three Philosophers 94 – 7 . Oxford : Basil Blackwell . See, e.g., ST Ia.85.2, ad 1: “What is cognized intellectively [intellectum] is in the one who has the intellective cognition [intelligente] by means of its likeness. And it is in this sense that we say that what is actually cognized intellectively is the intellect actualized [intellectum in actu est intellectus in actu], insofar as a likeness of the thing that is cognized intellectively is the form of the intellect, in the way that a likeness of the sensible thing is the form of a sense actualized.” I'm grateful to Scott MacDonald for reminding me of Peter Geach's stimulating account of this direct realism in G.E.M. Anscombe and P.T. Geach
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• De anima On a sense's infallibility regarding its proper object see, e.g., Aristotle [3], II6, 418a11–16.
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• Metaphysics On the infallibility of intellect regarding the nature of a thing see, e.g., Aristotle [4], IX 10, 1051b25–6.
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• See also DM 16.6c: “false opinion in us occurs for the most part as a result of reasoning carried on as it should not be [ex indebita ratiocinatione].”
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• Metaphysics See also, e.g., ST Ia.84.6, s.c.: “The Philosopher proves that the source of our cognition is in sensation”; cf. I 1, 981a2; Aristotle [12], Posterior Analytics II 15,100a3.
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• ‘sense’ Aquinas even suggests at one point that it is the special character of the apprehension a sense has of its proper object that leads us to say even in cases of indubitable intellectual apprehension that we something (ST Ia.54.5c).
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.17.2c; 85.6c.
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• Metaph. Cf. IV lect. 12, n. 672: “Sensory cognition takes place through an alteration of sense in response to sensible things in such a way that a sense's sensing something results from the sensible thing's impression on the sense.” Also III De an. lect. 1, n. 577: “Any things that are sensed in virtue of the fact that they alter a sense are sensed per se and not incidentally; for to sense per se is to undergo something from a sensible thing.” (Both proper and common sensing are sensing per se.)
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• See also, e.g., ST Ia.16.1c; 17.1c; DV 1.3c.
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• De anima Among the very many passages in which this Aristotelian point is made, those in Aquinas's commentary on are closest to the source: II De an. lect. 13, n. 384; III De an. lect. 4, n. 630; lect. 5, n. 645; lect. 6, n. 661.
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.17.2c: “a sense cannot have false cognition about sensible things that are proper to it, except per accidens and relatively rarely”; 85.6c: “a sense is not deceived about its proper object. except perhaps per accidens, because of a contingent impediment in its organ.”
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• De an. See, e.g., III lect. 6, n. 661; ST Ia.17.2c; 85.6c.
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• Metaph. Cf. IV lect. 14, nn. 692–3, where error in a sense's judgment about its proper object is attributed not to the sense itself but to a defective phantasia.
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• See, e.g., the treatment of the sense-of-taste example in ST Ia.85.2c.
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• De an. See, e.g., ST Ia.12.4c; and esp. 85.6c: intellect cannot be deceived in regard to its proper object ‘because of an organ, since intellect is not a power that uses an organ’; also III lect. 7, n. 687.
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• As Scott MacDonald has suggested to me, Aquinas's acknowledgement of the epistemic importance of intellect's capacity for reflexive judgment introduces an internalist component into his theory of cognition, however much it may seem otherwise to be a kind of externalism.
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• See also, e.g., DV 1.9c, where a limited sort of reflexive cognition is assigned to sense: “for although a sense cognizes itself sensing, it does not cognize its own nature; as a consequence, it also does not cognize the nature of its act or the degree of its correspondence to the thing, and so neither does it cognize its truth”; ST Ia.16.2c: “Thus to have cognition of the conformity is to know the truth. But sense in no way has cognition of it. For although sight has the likeness of the visible thing, it has no cognition of the relationship there is between the thing seen and the sense's apprehension of it.” Cf. ST Ia.78.4, ad 2, where at least one aspect of this otherwise intellective reflexive cognition is assigned to the common sense.
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• Although intellect's role is crucial (in ways that will become clearer in what follows), some of the possibly erroneous judgments near the beginning of the processing of the sensible species (the data) can be attributed to internal senses, faculties between the external senses and the intellect in the processing of data (see, e.g., ST Ia.78.4; QDA 13). See also n. 41 above.
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• “Although intellect's operation arises from sensation, in connection with a thing apprehended by sense intellect has cognition of many things that sense cannot perceive” (ST Ia.78.4, ad 4).
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.84.6c; 84.7, passim; 85.1, s.c.; ad 3; 85.2, ad 3; SCG II.80 & 81, n.1618.
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• 1988 . De anima See, e.g., ST Ia.84.6c; ad 2; 84.7c; ad 2; 85.1, passim. The Aristotelian source of this account of phantasia is in III 3,427a16–429a9; see III De an. lect. 5 & 6. On this aspect of Aristotle's philosophy of mind see esp. Michael V. Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (New Haven: Yale University Press.
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.85.1.
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.85.2.
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• ‘imaginatio’ Aquinas sometimes uses the Latin word for this faculty, but he seems to prefer Aristotle's Greek word ‘phantasia.’
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• Metaphysics IV 5,1010b1–3; see also, e.g., ST Ia.17.2, obj. 2.
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• De an. Cf. III lect. 5, n. 644: “The Philosopher says that the animals that have phantasia are those to which something appears in a phantasm even when it is not actually sensed”; also lect. 6, n. 665: “But when the movement of phantasia takes place in the absence of sensation, it can be deceived even about proper sensibles, for it sometimes imagines absent things as white even though they are black. Other movements of phantasia, however, those that are caused by the sensing of incidental sensibles and by the sensing of common sensibles, can be false whether the sensible is present or not. But they are more false in the absence of the sensible than when it is [est/sunt] at a distance.”
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• Cf. 166–7, above. See also ST Ia.85.2, ad 3: “Two operations are found in the sensory part of the soul. One occurs only by way of a change effected in it, and the operation of sense in this respect is completed by means of having a change effected in it by a sensible thing. The other activity is formation, which occurs when the imaginative power forms for itself an image [idolum] of a thing that is absent, or even of a thing that has never been seen.” Although the passage is ambiguous, I'm inclined to think that veridical phantasms are products of the first of these two activities, and that all potentially deceptive, non-veridical phantasms are products of formation. Cf. Ia.77.4c (near the end).
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• Whatever other sources of unreliability there might be at this juncture, the mere abstraction of intelligible species from phantasms by intellect is, as might be expected in Aquinas's reliabilism, no more capable of introducing error than is a sense's reception of its proper objects: “Even though intellection is not an activity carried out by means of any corporeal organ, its objects are phantasms, which are related to it as colors to sight” (SCG II.80 & 81, n. 1618).
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• On healthy imaginations, orderly phantasms, and the possibility of an intellect only slightly impeded even in sleep, see esp. ST Ia.84.8, ad 2.
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• [velatum] In interpreting Aristotle's observations on imagination in animals generally, Aquinas comes close to saying this in so many words, although the focus is on error in action rather than in cognition: “many animals behave on the basis of their phantasiae, but this happens because of an absence (defectum) of intellect; for because intellect is superior [to phantasia], when intellect is present, its judgment governs action. And so when intellect is not in control, animals act on the basis of phantasia— some (the beasts) because they have no intellect at all, others (human beings) because they have a darkened intellect. This happens in three ways. Sometimes because of some passion of anger, desire, fear, or the like; sometimes because of some weakness, as happens in frenetics and madmen; and sometimes in a dream, as happens to people in sleep. For it is from these causes that it happens that intellect does not prevail over phantasia, so that a person follows an imaginary [phantasticam] apprehension as if it were true” (III De an. lect. 6, nn. 669–70).
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• Fourth Meditation. I'm grateful to Sydney Shoemaker for reminding me that this interpretation of Aquinas's account of error bears a strong resemblance to the line Descartes takes in his There Descartes brings out explicitly the central idea of the account I find adumbrated in Aquinas. For example, “So what then is the source of my mistakes? It must be simply this: the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect; but instead of restricting it within the same limits, I extend its use to matters which I do not understand. Since the will is indifferent in such cases, it easily turns aside from what is true and good, and this is the source of my error and sin” (trans, from Descartes [1], vol. 2, 40–1).
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.13.9c; 57.1, ad 3; 57.2, ad 1; and esp. 85.1, passim.
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• Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate See, e.g., ST Ia. 85.1, s.c.; Thomas Aquinas [12], qq. 5 and 6; and esp. III De an. lect. 8, n. 716: “Thus things that are separated from matter in their existence [i.e., separated spiritual substances] can be perceived by intellect alone, while those that are not separated from sensible matter in their existence but rather conceptually [i.e., mathematical entities] are cognized by intellect without sensible matter but not without intelligible matter. Natural entities, however, are intellectively cognized on the basis of abstraction from individuating matter but not from sensible matter entirely. For a human being is intellectively cognized as composed of flesh and bones, but on the basis of abstraction from this flesh and these bones. And that is why it is sense or imagination (imaginatio), not intellect, that has direct cognition of individuals.” In this article I consider only natural entities as objects of intellection, not also mathematical entities or spiritual substances.
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• See ST Ia.85.1, obj. 1.
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• In Dionysii De divinis nominibus , 7 See also, e.g., ST Ia.13.12c; 50.2c; Thomas Aquinas [13], lect. 3, n. 724: “all cognition is in accord with the mode of that by which something is cognized, just as every activity is in accord with the mode of the form by means of which someone carries out the activity.”
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.85.2c; ad 2.
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• ‘intelligere’ Aquinas thinks this feature of intellect is apparent even etymologically: “The name ‘intellect’ derives from the fact that it has cognition of the intimate characteristics of a thing; for [to have intellective cognition] is by way of saying ‘intus legere’ [to read penetratingly]. Sense and imagination [imaginatio] have cognition of external accidents only; intellect alone succeeds in reaching a thing's essence” (DV 1.12c).
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• ‘ens’: E.g., ST Ia.5.2c; 11.2, ad 4; 12.1, obj. 3; 16.4, ad 2; IaIIae.55.4, ad 1; SCG II.83, n. 1678; ‘ens intelligibile’: SCG II.98, n. 1835; ‘ens universale’: ST Ia.105.4c; SCG III.25, n. 2066; ‘ens vel verum commune’: ST Ia.55.1.c; 79.7c; 87.3, ad 1; IaIIae.9.1c; 10.1, ad 3; ‘verum’: ST Ia.20.1c; 54.2c; IaIIae.3.7c; 10.1c; IIaIIae.25.2c; 'substantia': ST IIIa.75.5, ad 2; ‘intima rei’: DV 1.12c; ‘interiora rei’: SCG IV. 11, n. 3475; ‘essentia rei’: ST Ia.57.1, ad2; IaIIae.31.5c; DV 1.12c; ‘quidditas rei’: ST Ia.17.3, ad 1; 18.2c; 85.5c; 85.6c; 86.2c; 88.3c; ‘quidditas sive natura in materia corporali existens’: ST Ia.84.7c; 84.8c; ad 1; 85.5, ad 3; 85.8c; 87.2, ad 2; 87.3c; ad 1; 94.2c.
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• E.g., ST Ia.16.2, obj.1; 17.3, ad 1; 57.1, ad 2; 58.4c; ad 1; ad 3; 58.5c; ad obj.; 67.3c; 89.5c; IaIIae 3.8c; 10.1, ad 3; 31.5c; IIaIIae.8.1c; IIIa.10.3, ad 2; 76.7c; SCG I.58, n. 489; 59, n. 496; 61, n. 508; 66, n. 545; III.41, n. 2182; 46, n. 2236.
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• De An. In III lect. 8, nn. 705, 706, 712, 713, Aquinas offers some helpful introductory remarks on quiddities in this connection: “the quiddities of things are other than the things only per accidens. For example, the quiddity of a white man is not the same as the white man, because the white man's quiddity contains in itself only what pertains to the species human being, but what I call a white man has within itself more than what belongs to the human species. [I]n all things that have a form in matter the thing and its quod quid est are not entirely the same: Socrates is not his humanity. [Intellect] has cognition of both [the universal and the individual], but in different ways. For it has cognition of the nature of the species, or of the quod quid est, by directly extending itself into it; it has cognition of the individual, however, by a kind of reflection, insofar as it turns back to the phantasms from which the intelligible species are abstracted.”
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• Sent. See, e.g., I 19.5.7, ad 7.
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• De an. Infallible abstraction plays an essential part in the cognition of quiddities: “intellect apprehends the quiddities of things differently from the way they exist in sensible things; for it does not apprehend them with the individuating conditions that are adjoined to them in sensible things. And intellect can manage this without any falsity, since nothing prevents one of two conjoined things being understood without the other's being understood” (III lect. 8, n. 717). See also III De an. lect. 10, n. 731.
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• ‘ti esti kata to ti en einai,’ “Every assertion says something of something, as too does denial, and is true or false. But not every thought is such; that of what a thing is in respect of ‘what it is for it to be what it was’ is true, and does not say something of something. But just as the seeing of a special object is true, while the seeing whether the white thing is a man or not is not always true, so it is with those things which are without matter” (Hamlyn's translation). The Aristotelian technical term in inverted commas is which Aquinas encountered as ‘quid est secundum hoc quod aliquid erat esse.’
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• Peri herm. See, e.g., ST Ia.58.5c; 85.6c; I lect. 2, n. 20; lect. 3, n. 31.
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• De an. See, e.g., III lect. 8, n. 718: “what intellect has cognition of is the quiddity that is in things. For it is obvious that the scientiae are about the things intellect has cognition of.”; In Ioan. 1, lect. 1, n. 26: “When I want to grasp (concipere) the nature of a stone, I have to arrive at it by reasoning. And that is how it is in connection with all the other things we have intellective cognition of, with the possible exception of first principles, which are known (sciuntur) without discursive reason when they are known (nota) simply”; cf. III Sent. 23.1.2.
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• Lonergan , Bernard J. 1967 . Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas Edited by: Burrell , David B. Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press . Cf.: “the quod quid est is at the very center of Aristotelian and Thomist thought. For quod quid est is the first and immediate middle term of scientific syllogistic demonstration; simultaneously, it is the goal and term of all positive inquiry, which begins from wonder about data and proceeds to the search for causes. The quod quid est is the key idea not only in all logic and methodology, but also in all metaphysics” (24).
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• Metaph. See, e.g., VI lect. 4, nn. 1230–40; ST Ia.16.2, s.c.; I Peri herm. lect. 3, n. 31.
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• 1968 . I found Paul T. Durbin's discussion helpful (in Appendix 2 to his edition and translation of ST Ia.84–9, vol. XII in the Blackfriars edition [], 170–2), and in these paragraphs I make use of some of the passages he provides.
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• De spiritualibus creaturis , 11 See also, e.g., DV 4.1, ad 8; 6.1, ad 8; 10.1c; ad 6; ad 3; SCG I.3, n. 18; ST IIaIIae 8.1c; Thomas Aquinas [17], I Post, an., lect. 4, n. 43; II Post, an., lect. 13, n. 533. I'm grateful to Scott MacDonald for some of these references.
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• Sent. See, e.g., I 38.1.3c, where the first and second operations are explained as required in order to attend either to a thing's quiddity or its esse, respectively.
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• Post. an. As abstraction precedes the first operation, so reasoning, the use of the second operation's propositions in inferences, follows the second. In at least one place Aquinas expressly identifies it as the third operation— not of intellect but, more broadly, of reason (I lect. 1, n. 4).
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• [potest falli] See, e.g., ST Ia.85.6c: “Intellect is fallible regarding the aspects associated with a thing's essence or quiddity when it relates one of them to another in compounding or dividing, or even in reasoning.”
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• Physics See, e.g., ST Ia.14.6c: “Since our intellect [unlike God's] moves from potentiality to actuality, it attains a universal, confused cognition of things before attaining to a proper cognition of them, proceeding from the imperfect to the perfect, as is clear in I [1, 184a18–25]”; 85.3c; ad 3: “we have a confused kind of cognition of human being before we know how to distinguish everything belonging to the nature of a human being”; 85.4, ad 3; 75.5c.
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• SCG III.56, n. 2328: “The proper object of intellect is quod quid est, the substance of a thing. Therefore, whatever is in a thing that cannot be cognized through the cognition of its substance must be unknown (ignotum) to intellect.”
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• De an. See also, e.g., III lect. 11, n. 761, which illustrates, among other things, Aquinas's interpretation of ‘intelligentia indivisibilium’ as another description of what I am calling the alpha cognition. On this interpretation what is ‘indivisible’ is not, e.g., a point or an instant, but the as yet undivided (i.e., unanalyzed) concept of the quiddity. See also, e.g., ST Ia.85.8c; I Peri herm. lect. 3, n. 25; I Sent. 19.5.1, ad 7; 38.1.3c. On the association of names with natures see, e.g., DV 4.1, ad 8; ST Ia.13.8.
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• De an. Cf. III lect. 11, n. 751: “we have to bear in mind that the composition of a proposition is a production of reason and intellect, not a production of nature.”
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• 1908 . Sent. See also, e.g., ST Ia.58.5c; 85.6c; I 19.5.1, ad 7; SCG 1.59, n. 496; DV1.12c; III De an. lect. 11, n. 763; IX Metaph. lect. 10, n.
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• De an. See also, e.g., ST Ia.58.5c: “Sometimes we arrive at intellective cognition of a quiddity by compounding and dividing, just as we find out a definition by means of dividing [i.e., analyzing] or demonstrating”; I lect. 1, n. 10: “a definition lays out [notificat] the essence of a thing, which cannot be known [sciri] unless the principles are known [sciantur]”; SCG III.58, n. 2836: “In the operation of intellect by which it apprehends a quod quid est, falsity does not occur except per accidens, insofar as something of intellect's operation of compounding and dividing is mixed into this operation. That happens to the extent to which our intellect attains to cognizing the quiddity of any thing not at once but in an orderly inquiry.”; Thomas Aquinas [18], Super Ioannem 1, lect. 1, n. 26: “when I want to conceive of the nature [rationem] of a stone, I must arrive at it by reasoning— as is the case regarding all other things of which we have intellective cognition. So as long as intellect is driven now this way, now that, in the process of such reasoning, the formation [of the conception of the thing's nature] is not yet complete. It is only when intellect has completely conceived of the very nature of the thing that, for the first time, it completely possesses the thing's nature and then, too, the definition [rationem] of the word [associated with the thing].” I am grateful to Jan Aertsen for having called my attention to this last passage.
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• De anima III 4, 429a18. See also, e.g., III De an. lect. 7, n. 680: “our intellect is naturally suited to have intellective cognition of all sensible and corporeal things”; n. 681: intellect “can have cognition not only of one kind of sensible things. but rather universally, of sensible nature entirely.”
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.82.2c; IaIIae.10.2, ad 2; 57.5, ad 3.
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• See, e.g., ST Ia.18.3c; 62.8, ad 2; 82.1c; 82.2c; 85.6c.
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• Metaphysics SCG III.48, n. 2258: “As long as something is being moved toward perfection, it is not yet at its ultimate goal. But when it comes to having cognition of the truth, all human beings are always in a state of being moved and tending toward perfection; for those who follow after make further discoveries of other things than those that were discovered by their predecessors (as is said in II [1,993a31]).” > I am grateful to Jan A. Aertsen, William P. Alston, Gail Fine, Scott MacDonald, Steve Maitzen, Robert Pasnau, and Eleonore Stump for comments on earlier drafts. I owe special thanks to Eleonore Stump, for having first interested me in these topics, and to Jan Aertsen, who sent me learned, detailed comments on my interpretation of Aquinas's ‘first operation’ of intellect, about which he has some misgivings.
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