The Objectivity of Ideas

Ideas

An idea is the representation of the essence of a thing in the intellect. It is the re-presence of an object in the mind, and in a manner suited to the nature of the mind. It is the intentional presence of an object in the intellect.

We have more than once exemplified the formation of ideas. It will be of benefit to give a summary review of the process here.

If I see the picture of a triangle drawn in white chalk on a blackboard, I see one individual picture with its distinguishing or individuating marks. Thus, I see that this triangle has a certain size, a certain color, a certain position. Now, if I have never before seen a triangle, I can learn from the study of this picture just what a triangle is; what any triangle is; what all possible triangles must be. What my sense of sight perceives is a material, limited, individual picture. What my mind conceives through the study of this one picture, is the essence of triangle. This concept of an essence is an idea.

The process of forming the idea is as follows: The material picture of the triangle is impressed upon sight. This constitutes the impressed sensible species.

Sight, reacting to the impression, beholds the objective material picture then and there present before the eyes; sight does not express a species in which to contemplate the reality; sight terminates its perception by apprehending the object itself there present.

Now, the sense-finding of sight is reflected inwardly to the imagination, where it is held and preserved.

The mind or intellect (either here and now while the eyes behold the picture, or later when the image is evoked) pays attention to the picture as held in the imagination, and sees what it is that the picture represents. The light of the mind, like a sort of X-ray, penetrates the individual and material marks and conditions of the picture, and gets immediately at the essence which is given individual expression in the picture. The mind does this by its abstractive power (or prescinding light). In a word, the mind, by abstracting from color, size, position, etc., of the picture, lays bare the essence which is expressed in this picture, with this size, in this color, and so on. The essence, thus abstracted, is impressed by the mind upon itself, and is the impressed intelligible species.

The mind, reacting to the impression, apprehends the essence. Rather, the mind expresses the intelligible essence within itself; for the mind does not react to the material picture nor to the percept of it, but to the abstracted essence. This abstracted essence is not present before the eyes nor in the percept; what is on the blackboard and in the percept is the material thing, with essence unabstracted. So the mind expresses the abstracted essence within itself, and this is the expressed intelligible species or idea.

Ideas are not merely percepts in a high state of elaboration. The mistake of confusing the fields of sense and of intellect (of percepts and of ideas) has been the fundamental error of many critical philosophers : of John Locke (1632-1704), of Thomas Reid (1710-1796), of George Berkeley (1684-1753), of David Hume (1711-1796), and of many another gifted and sincere thinker. Perhaps no other error has led to such evil and widespread consequences to philosophy as this confusion of the fields of sense and intellect.

The difference between sense and intellect (between percept and idea) is an essential difference.

Sense perceives individual bodily reality as such; intellect does not, but becomes aware of individual bodily things as such only by a kind of reflection, when ideas have already been formed. Sense grasps its object by perceiving the very qualities which the intellect ignores (abstracts from) in forming the idea. Sense grasps bodily objects in an individual manner; intellect grasps bodily and non-bodily objects in a universal manner. There is nothing in sensation itself that leads by natural necessity to intellection. Brute animals have sensation, yet they manifest no tendency towards intellection, no elan for ideas, no nisus after understanding, no straining and effort for abstraction and reasoning.

Objectivity

If the essence which the idea represents exists in things outside the mind, or can so exist, then ideas have objectivity. Objectivity is but another word for validity, when the question is one of the value of knowledge. Ideas have objectivity if the matter of the thing known (the essence) exists or can exist in reality outside the mind. Even though the mode or form of existence of the essence conceived in the idea is singular and concrete in outer reality and universal in the mind, the objectivity of the idea stands.

What is required for objectivity* in ideas, is that the thing conceived be capable of existing outside the mind. In a word, objectivity or validity of ideas requires that their objects be trans-subjective in matter.

We assert that ideas have objectivity. Our argument for this true doctrine may be presented as follows :

1. The mind forms ideas by abstraction from the individual marks and material conditions of sensefindings. Now, sense-findings are objective, as we have seen in another place. Therefore, ideas, which are truly drawn from sense-findings, are also objective. In a word, what the mind draws from sensefindings by abstraction must be there, to be drawn out. The mind, in abstracting, does not inject anything into the sense-data; it gets at what is there, expressed and, so to speak, exemplified in the sense data.

The basis of the intellectual process is objective; that which is built, so to speak, upon this basis is justified by reality; therefore, that which is built upon the basis of sense-findings is objective and valid.

Putting the point in another way: the matter of ideas is trans-subjective; it does not come from the mind; it is no contribution of the mind. This objective matter may surely be grasped in this mode or that without losing its objectivity. The manner in which a reality is grasped does not destroy the reality. Hence, ideas, being objective (trans-subjective) in matter, are truly objective and valid. 2. The objectivity of ideas is denied by some phi2losophers, but always for reasons that are false.

Various as these reasons are, they all tend to one point, viz., that ideas do not represent reality. If that were the case, then ideas could come only from the mind itself, without reference to reality, or ideas would be imperfect representations of reality. If ideas are imperfect representations of reality (and we are not concerned to deny the point), then the case is ours, for an imperfect objectivity is objectivity. If ideas come from the mind as from a mental mill or factory, then we have Subjectivism, which, as we have seen, is a doctrine entirely inadmissible, for it is self -contradictory, offers no single sane argument for its acceptance, and utterly destroys all science.

C) UNIVERSALS The idea is by nature a universal idea. It represents an essence, and most essences are capable of existence in a plurality of individuals. Essences that are not so capable, and that can exist only in one being (such as the essence of God, the Infinite Being) are so perfect that the mind has no exhaustive grasp of them, and is apt, because of obscurity in the idea, to hold them as though they were capable of existence in a plurality of individuals. Thus men speak of the “gods” of the pagans. Thus an apologist begins the development of the proof that there can be but one God by saying, “Now, let us suppose for a moOF INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE 217 ment that there are two Infinite Beings . . and goes on to show that the supposition leads to absurdity.

The idea, then, is a universal idea. The idea as such is universal. Now, the object of the universal idea, the essence conceived in universal, is called the Universal. What is the nature of Universals? Do essences, which the mind conceives in universal, exist as Universals in nature outside the mind ? This is a question that we have considered and answered in our study of the nature of intellectual knowledge. It recurs here, for the nature of Universals is manifestly a point of importance in the study of the validity of knowledge.

There are four, and only four, possible doctrines on the nature of Universals. They are the following :

1. Nominalism.—This doctrine holds that Universals do not exist in nature, or, for that matter, in the mind. Universals are not essences, they are only groups to which the mind gives names. The doctrine is called Nominalism, from the Latin nomen, “name.” It is a convenience, nay, a necessity (say the Nominalists), to have some means of grouping the multitudinous things that the mind considers. I cannot know every possible man; so I group men, and label the group man, or mankind. I cannot know every single blade of grass or every grain of sand; I have need to lump these things together as grass and sand, else I will find it impossible to think of them or speak of them at all. The so-called Universal is merely the group into which the mind gathers things so that it can handle them. Outside the mind there are only individual things. Inside the mind there is no basic grasp of essences of these things. The mind merely exercises an arbitrary function of grouping things that seem similar, and gives each group a common group-name. Such names are “universal ideas,” and the arbitrarily formed groups are “Universals.”
2. Conceptualism.—This doctrine asserts that the “groups” into which the mind gathers things are formed, not arbitrarily as the mind pleases, but in a manner imposed by the nature of the mind itself.

The mind has a structure that determines its mode of forming concepts or ideas, and according to this mode things must be known, if they are known at all. Therefore, ideas are not truly universal ideas; they are not apprehensions of essences; they are merely expressions of the mind, pre-determined by the mind’s own structure. Nor do Universals exist truly. These are but groups of things which the mind, by natural necessity, gathers together in concepts. 3. Ultra-Realism or Exaggerated Realism.—Universal essences exist as such outside the mind. Hence the Universal is a real thing, existing as a Universal, in nature apart from the mind. The individuals share or participate or reflect the universal essence in an individual way. Thus, for example, there is a universal essence, man. Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary, Rose, and Jane, and all other human individuals, share this essence, or each has part of it, or each reflects all of it, as several mirrors reflect the same scene. The , essence itself is a universal thing, and the mind’s grasp of this thing is a universal idea. Ultra-Realism, therefore, maintains that Universals as such exist in nature outside the mind. 4. Moderate Realism.—Outside the mind there are only individual things. The mind, however, by its abstractive power, penetrates the non-essential marks and material conditions of the individual thing and gets at the essence which makes the individual the real basic thing that it is. This essence the mind holds in universal concept or idea. And this idea is verified in reality, for each of the individuals that have the essence which the idea represents, is really, truly, and faithfully represented by the idea.

The idea man, for example, though one idea, applies with equal force and validity to Tom and Mary, to Indian and Caucasian, to sane and insane, to infant and adult, to each and all possible men. Thus the Universal (that is, the universal essence) exists as such, as invested with universality, only in the mind; but it is founded solidly on things outside the mind, inasmuch as it is verified in each and every individual that has the essence which the mind grasps as the Universal. In a word, Universals as such, formally, exist only in the mind; fundamentally, they exist in nature outside the mind, Now, for a word of criticism on each of these doctrines :

1. Nominalism cannot be true. It contradicts itself.

How can the mind classify things without a basis of classification? If, as H. G. Wells says, “all chairs are quite different,” how can we speak of “all chairs” ? How do all men come to make the same classifications ? If men did not make the same classifications, how would speech be possible; how could we understand one another? When the Nominalist says, “Universals are groups; universal ideas are groupnames,” he contradicts himself, for his words express his grasp of the meaning (the grasped essence) of “Universals” and “group” and “name” and “idea.”—Notable Nominalists mentioned in the History of Philosophy are: Heraclitus (5 century b. c.), Antisthenes (4 century b. c.), Roscelin (about 10501121), and the empiricists, sensists, and positivists of more recent times, such as Hobbes (1588-1679), Locke (1632-1704), Hume (1711-1776), Condillac (1715-1780), Comte (1798-1857), Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Spencer (1820-1903), Wundt (1832-1921). 2. Conceptualism cannot be true. It makes the mind a sort of concept-factory and destroys all objectivity of thought. For, even though Conceptualism admits the existence of things in the world about us, it destroys all relation of our knowledge to these things; it makes true knowledge impossible. Thus does Conceptualism lead directly to Skepticism, and thus does it merit the rejection which Skepticism deserves by reason of its self-contradictory character.

If the idea is formed by the mind, not upon instruction from reality, but from the mind’s natural structure and necessity, then reality has no part in the idea, and all knowledge is subjective. The step from Subjectivism to Skepticism is short and direct.

Hence, Conceptualism is not an acceptable doctrine. —Notable names associated with Conceptualism are: Zeno (3 century b. c.) ; the ancient Stoics; William of Ockam (about 1280-1348); John Buridan (14 century); Peter d’Ailly (1350-1420); Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). 3. Ultra-Realism cannot be true. For, according to this doctrine, the Universal must either exist apart from individual things, or it must constitute the essence of individual things. If it exists apart from individual things, then it is not the essence of these things, it is not in the things, and the mind which perceives it there is mistaken. Thus is the objectivity of knowledge destroyed, and we lapse into Skepticism.

If, on the other supposition, the Universal constitutes the essence of each individual, then we have things that are at the same time individual and universal—an obvious contradiction—or we have the individuals of the same essence existing as mere accidents of a common essence, and again the validity of knowledge perishes, and Skepticism casts its cloud of darkness and silence over all minds and all science.—Notable among ultra-realists (of one sort or another) were: Plato (5-4 centuries b. c.) ; William of Champeaux (1070-1120); the Neoplatonists; Hegel (1770-1831); Schelling (1775-1854). 4. Moderate Realism is the true doctrine. We have already shown this by exclusion, since the other three systems are manifestly inadmissible, and since Moderate Realism is the only possible doctrine left to us.

We have a positive argument for the truth of this doctrine in the fact that it squares perfectly with both theoretical logic and practical experience. Nay, so certain is this doctrine, that those who oppose it are forced to exemplify its use in the very expression of their doctrine and argument.—Among the exponents of Moderate Realism we find: Aristotle (4 century b. c.); St. Anselm (1033-1109); St.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274); Scholastic philosophers.

Summary Of The Article

In this article we have defined idea, and have reviewed the process of its formation. We have indicated the danger of confusing the fields of sensation and intellection. We have defined objectivity of ideas and have offered arguments to show that ideas are truly objective, and hence the basis of certitude.

We have discussed the doctrines possible on the naVALIDITY OF JUDGMENTS 223 ture of Universals, and have found Moderate Realism true, while we have rejected as false Nominalism, Conceptualism, and Ultra-Realism.