The Origin and Expression of Ideas
How intellectual concepts or ideas originate from sense-experience; the role of abstraction and the agent intellect; the expression of ideas in language.
Ideas do not come from the senses directly — the senses present only concrete, individual, material objects — but they originate in sense-experience through the operation called abstraction. The agent intellect (intellectus agens) is the active power of the soul by which the universal intelligible content latent in the individual sense-image (phantasm) is abstracted and made actually intelligible: the universal concept or idea is formed in the possible intellect (intellectus possibilis), which is the receptive, knowing side of the intellectual faculty. The article then examines three competing theories of the origin of ideas (innate ideas, occasionalism, empiricism) and rejects each in favour of the Scholastic doctrine of abstraction from the phantasm. The expression of ideas in language is examined: the inner word (verbum mentis) is the concept itself as the mind's interior expression of its knowledge; the outer word (spoken or written language) is the conventional sign which expresses the inner word to others.
a) Origin of Ideas — b) Expression of Ideas
a) Origin of Ideas
How do intellectual concepts or ideas originate? Three main types of answer have been given.
Innate ideas (chiefly associated with Descartes and the Rationalist tradition): ideas are innate, inborn, present in the mind prior to and independent of sense-experience. This view is to be rejected. We have no evidence of the existence of ideas prior to sense-experience. The mind of an infant is a tabula rasa — a blank tablet — so far as actual knowledge is concerned. A man born blind has no idea of color. A man born deaf has no idea of sound. Ideas arise with, and after, the relevant sense-experiences; they do not precede them.
Occasionalism (Malebranche): God produces ideas in the mind on the occasion of sense-experiences, as a kind of parallel supernatural illumination. This is an unnecessary multiplication of causes, against the principle of parsimony; and it makes the intellect a passive recipient of divinely infused illumination rather than an active cognitive faculty.
Empiricism (Locke, Hume): ideas are simply sense-images worked over, associated, and combined in various ways; there is no real abstraction, and no qualitative difference between sense-knowledge and intellectual knowledge. This view is demonstrably false: the intellect grasps things in the abstract and in universal, and the senses cannot do this; hence intellectual knowledge is not reducible to sensory knowledge however refined or combined.
The correct doctrine is that ideas arise from sense-experience through abstraction. The sense presents a concrete, individual image (called a phantasm) of a sensed object. The intellect, being a spiritual faculty, can lay hold of the essential nature — the universal, intelligible content — which is latent in this individual sense-image. The act of laying hold of this universal content — of stripping away the individualizing material conditions and grasping the common nature — is called abstraction.
Abstraction is performed by the agent intellect (intellectus agens), which is the active power of the soul that illuminates the phantasm and extracts from it the intelligible species — the abstract universal content. This intelligible species is then impressed upon the possible intellect (intellectus possibilis), which is the receptive and knowing side of the intellectual faculty; the possible intellect reacts to this impressed species and forms the concept or idea, which is the expressed species or verbum mentis (word of the mind).
The complete intellect, therefore, comprises two aspects or functions: the agent intellect (active, abstracting) and the possible intellect (receptive, knowing). Together they constitute the one intellectual faculty of the human soul.
b) Expression of Ideas
Ideas, once formed, tend to be expressed. The expression of an idea takes two forms: the inner word and the outer word.
The inner word (verbum mentis) is the concept itself considered as the mind’s interior expression of its knowledge. When the intellect grasps the nature of something — when it understands — it forms an interior expression of what it has understood. This interior expression is the concept or idea. The inner word is thus the mind’s own proper “speech” — the expression within the mind of what the mind knows.
The outer word is the spoken or written sign by which the inner word is communicated to others. Language is the system of conventional outer signs by which inner intellectual knowledge is expressed and shared. The conventional character of language is shown by the fact that different peoples use different sounds (and different written symbols) to express the same intellectual content.
The relationship between the outer word and the inner word (concept) is one of expression and sign. The outer word is a conventional sign of the inner word; the inner word is a natural sign of the thing known.
The power of intelligently significant speech — the ability to express concepts in conventional arbitrary signs, and to understand such signs in their conventional meaning — is a characteristic mark of rational beings. No merely sentient organism possesses it, as we have already established.
Summary of the Article
In this Article we have studied the origin of ideas, examining and rejecting three inadequate theories (innate ideas, occasionalism, empiricism) and establishing the Scholastic doctrine of abstraction from the phantasm. We have explained the roles of the agent intellect (abstracting the intelligible content from the sense-image) and the possible intellect (receiving the intelligible species and forming the concept). We have examined the expression of ideas in the inner word (the concept as the mind’s interior expression) and the outer word (spoken or written language as a conventional sign of the inner word).