Epistemology — Conclusions
The conclusions of Glenn's Criteriology set out as numbered theses, with a consolidated table of the refuted positions and the one intra-scholastic dispute marked.
Tract: Criteriology · Paul J. Glenn · 1933 · 30 articles in three Books, plus an appendix on science and method School: Thomist Depends on: Logic — the syllogism and the dicta (Th. 26). Supports: every other tract, since each presupposes that the mind can know.
What this tract is for
Criteriology asks not what we know but whether and how we know validly. Its formal object is the truth and certitude of human knowledge; its material object is the knowing subject, the object known, and the act of knowing. It is distinguished from Dialectics (formal logic), which examines correctness of inference rather than truth of content.
It is the tract every other tract leans on. Ontology’s essences must be knowable, Theodicy’s demonstrations must be valid, Ethics’ moral law must be apprehensible. If Criteriology fails, nothing else in the series stands.
The architecture
- Book I — The faculties. What knowing is, and what the two knowing powers (sense, intellect) do.
- Book II — Truth and its criterion. What truth and falsity are, the states of mind short of and at certitude, and the criterion by which truth is manifested.
- Book III — The defence. That certitude exists (against scepticism, agnosticism, relativism); that sense-knowledge is valid; that intellectual knowledge is valid; and that authority is a genuine source of certitude.
The tract’s structural problem is self-reference, and it is worth seeing before reading anything else. Criteriology must establish the validity of knowledge using knowledge. Glenn faces this directly: the existence of certitude cannot be demonstrated without begging the question, but it can be proved indirectly — by the fact that all men admit the primary certitudes perforce, by the mind’s natural tendency to unwavering assent, and by the requirements of rational individual and social life. The three primary truths (Th. 17) are indemonstrable not by defect but because they are too simple to analyse further, and each is such that denying it asserts it.
Book I — Knowledge
1. Knowledge is the subject’s inner grasp of an object, leaving the object unaltered in its own reality. It is not a photograph but a re-presence of the object within the knower. → B1 C1 A1 — Knowledge and Its Elements
2. Knowing external objects proceeds through two objects: the intra-organic (the physical impression on the organ — the retinal image) and the extra-organic (the thing itself). The intra-organic is immediately sensed; through it the extra-organic is mediately known. But the medium is not consciously recognised as a medium, so what is known is the object, not an image of it. This single point is what blocks representationalism at the outset — a signet pressed into wax makes a third thing, figured-wax; a signet pressed on the sense makes no third thing but direct knowledge of the signet. → B1 C1 A2 — The Process of Knowing
3. Objects are trans-subjective in three degrees. External sensation-objects: trans-subjective in matter, form, and presence. Imagination-objects: in matter and form but not presence. Intellectual objects: in matter only — the essence is really in things, but the universal mode of knowing is not the individual mode of existing. This graded analysis is the ground of scholastic realism and the precise place where idealism is refused. → B1 C1 A3 — The Trans-subjectivity of the Object of Knowledge
4. Sense-knowledge is infallible within its proper sphere, given four conditions: the sense organically normal; engaged on its proper object; the object proportioned to it; in a suitable medium. Failure of any condition, not failure of the faculty, is what produces so-called sense error. → B1 C2 A1 — Sense and Its Function
5. Nine senses are distinguished — five external (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) and four internal (common or central sense, imagination, estimative, sense-memory). Sense-objects are per se (proper sensibles, known by one sense; common sensibles — size, shape, motion, rest, number — known by several) or per accidens, known through experienced association. → B1 C2 A1, A2, A3
6. Imagination never creates. It conserves, reproduces, and rearranges — always recombining materials furnished by prior sensation. → B1 C2 A3 — Knowledge of the Internal Senses
7. The intellect is a supra-sensuous, spiritual faculty, proved from its acts: it forms universal concepts, it reflects on itself, and it grasps purely intelligible objects (unity, goodness, duty, virtue) that no sense can apprehend. It is not the brain — the brain is the seat of the internal senses, not the organ of intellect. → B1 C3 A1 — The Intellect
8. Reflex acts are decisive for the intellect’s immateriality: the intellect turns back on itself to know that it knows and to judge its own judgments. No purely material faculty can reflect on itself. The whole case for the intellect’s spirituality — and, downstream, for the soul’s immortality in Psychology — hangs on this. → B1 C3 A2 — The Function of the Intellect
9. Three acts of the intellect: simple apprehension (forms the idea), judgment (pronounces agreement or disagreement of two ideas), reasoning (infers a third judgment from two through a middle term). Truth and falsity are found formally in the judgment alone — ideas in themselves are neither true nor false. → B1 C3 A2
Book II — Truth
10. Truth is the conformity of mind with reality — adequatio intellectus et rei. Three species: ontological (things conformed to the divine intellect — always present, so there is no ontological falsity); logical (human judgment conformed to its object — the concern of this tract, and the only place error is possible, since the created mind apprehends rather than produces its object); moral (speech conformed to thought — the concern of Ethics). → B2 C1 A1 — Truth
11. Truth admits no formal degrees. A judgment is true or false. Degrees exist materially (extent of field known) and subjectively (firmness of assent), never formally. → B2 C1 A1
12. Things called false — false teeth, false gold — are so only by metaphor, because they resemble true things and occasion false judgments. Ontological falsity does not exist. → B2 C1 A2 — Falsity
13. Error has four proximate causes: defective sense conditions, precipitation of judgment, the disturbing influence of passion and will, and reliance on inadequate authority. Note what is absent — the faculties themselves. Error is accidental and correctable, which is the standing reply to scepticism (Th. 19). → B2 C1 A2
14. Four states of mind fall short of certitude: ignorance (privative, of what one ought to know — a real defect; or negative, a mere absence); doubt (positive, equal reasons both sides; or negative, no strong reasons either way); suspicion (a slight inclination without sufficient reason even for opinion); and opinion (definite but tentative assent, recognising the opposite may be true, resting on probability intrinsic or extrinsic). → B2 C2 A1 — Indecisive States of Mind
15. Certitude is the firm and unwavering assent of the mind to known truth, excluding all fear of error. It differs from opinion by excluding that fear, and from doubt, which suspends assent altogether. → B2 C2 A2 — Decisive States of Mind
16. The ultimate criterion of truth is objective evidence — the intelligibility of things as they open themselves to the attentive intellect. It is called objective because it belongs to the object, not the subject. Evidence is immediate (self-evident first principles, known in the very grasp of their terms) or mediate (reached by demonstration resolving into self-evident elements). Everything in Book III is an application of this one thesis. → B2 C3 A1 — The True Criterion
Book III — Certitude
17. Dogmatism is the correct position: certain knowledge is attainable. All certitude rests on three self-evident, indemonstrable primary truths — the First Fact (“I exist”), the First Principle (non-contradiction), and the First Condition (“I can know truth and reason validly”). Each cannot be denied without being implicitly asserted: to deny one’s existence one must exist to deny it; to deny non-contradiction is to claim that things are so and not otherwise. Note the term: for Criteriology a dogma is a self-evident truth, from the Greek dokein*, to think — the religious sense is a separate usage.* → B3 C2 A1 — Dogmatism
18. Certitude is formally subjective but causally objective — a state of the knowing subject, produced by objective truth. False certitude, firm assent to a false proposition, is possible but is not certitude in the strict sense. → B3 C1 A1 — Definition and Classification of Certitude
19. In its formal character certitude admits no degrees, since any admixture of fear of error makes the assent opinion. With respect to its motives, three descending grades: metaphysical (grounded in essence — admits no exception even by miracle); physical (grounded in the constancy of nature — conditional on the absence of miracle); moral (grounded in the normal rational conduct of persons — the weakest, but sufficient for all practical life, including legal conviction and historical knowledge). Each fully excludes fear of error within its own sphere — moral certitude is not a weak certitude but a certitude about a different kind of ground. → B3 C1 A2 — Degrees of Certitude
20. Scepticism is self-contradictory: it teaches with certainty that there is no certainty. Its three standard arguments fail — that the faculties deceive us (error is accidental and correctable, and the claim asserts certain knowledge of a fact); the deceiving-demon scenario (gratuitous, contrary to all evidence, self-undermining); and the infinite regress of criteria (dissolved by self-evident truths, in which truth and its evidence are grasped in one act). → B3 C2 A2 — Skepticism
21. Agnosticism in both forms is self-refuting. Subjectivism (only conscious states are certain) collapses into universal scepticism. Positivism (only sense-data are certain) states as certain a proposition that is not itself a sense-datum, and destroys science, which presupposes causal relations no sense perceives. The root error is conflating “known through sense-data” with “limited to sense-data in content.” → B3 C2 A3 — Agnosticism
22. Relativism fails on three counts: it proposes as an absolute truth that all truth is relative; it destroys reasoning, since inference requires stable logical principles; and it confuses growth in knowledge — entirely consistent with absolute truth — with change in truth itself. → B3 C2 A4 — Relativism
23. All knowledge begins with external sensation; Innatism is inadmissible. It is not required to explain ideas and conflicts with the findings of introspection. The mind is tabula rasa: its first data come from sensation, from which the intellect abstracts. → B3 C3 A1 — The Validity of External Sense-Knowledge
24. The external world is real, not a projection of the ego. Theories denying trans-subjectivity to sense-objects lead to absurdity: they make the subjective present itself as its opposite for no reason; and explaining the belief as habit fails, since the first “externalisations” preceded any habit. Positively: in sensation we are aware that we receive rather than act. → B3 C3 A1
25. Sense-consciousness is reliable because denial of it involves affirmation of it — to doubt that one is conscious is to be conscious of doubting. Intellectual consciousness is similarly reliable as a report of fact; it errs only when it ventures past its limits into explaining the ultimate nature of what it reports. → B3 C3 A2 — The Validity of Internal Sense-Knowledge
26. Moderate Realism is the true doctrine of universals. The universal essence is really in things as their common nature; universality — predicability of many — is the work of the abstracting intellect. Established both by exclusion (Nominalism, Conceptualism and Ultra-Realism being inadmissible) and positively, since it squares with logic and experience, and its opponents are forced to exemplify it in the very statement of their doctrine. → B3 C4 A1 — The Objectivity of Ideas
27. Judgment is the basic thought-process, and its validity rests on the objectivity of the ideas it employs. Ideas are simple apprehensions of essences; thought is what the mind does with them, and every pronouncement is a judgment. Some judgments are self-evident — when the mind attentively compares two ideas, the truth itself shines out. Errors of judgment arise from accidental causes, chiefly precipitateness of mind in pronouncing before the evidence is properly obtained and evaluated. → B3 C4 A2 — The Validity of Judgments
28. Deductive reasoning is a reliable instrument for extending certain knowledge, resting on the dictum de omni and dictum de nullo. Induction yields certitude when perfect, or when the principle of sufficient reason licenses extension from a sufficient sample. All science is the systematic development of what is implicitly contained in the first principles. → B3 C4 A3 — The Validity of Reasoning
29. Authority is a genuine source of certitude, not merely of opinion, when the authority is competent (knows the matter) and sincere (intends to communicate truth) — conditions established by consistency, absence of motive to deceive, number and independence of witnesses, and corroboration. But authority is never the ultimate criterion; it is a vehicle by which evidence reaches those without direct access to it, and resolves ultimately into evidence. → B3 C5 A1, A3 — Authority in General; Human Authority
30. Authority does not extend beyond its scope. A scientist’s authority on his science carries no evidential weight in metaphysics or theology. Universal consent (consensus gentium) has real convergent weight but is not itself the criterion — it presupposes the trans-subjective reality that makes convergence significant. → B3 C5 A3 — Human Authority
31. Divine faith is the firmest certitude in its subjective quality, resting on the authority of God, who cannot err and cannot deceive. Its formal motive is the authority of God revealing — not the beauty, consolation, or usefulness of what is revealed. Its credibility is established by natural reason through miracle and fulfilled prophecy. Rationalism is inadmissible; faith presupposes and builds on reason and never contradicts what reason correctly demonstrates. → B3 C5 A2 — Divine Authority
The refuted positions
Roughly a third of this tract is refutation, and listing each as a thesis would obscure more than it shows. Consolidated:
| Position | Associated with | Ground of rejection |
|---|---|---|
| Universal / partial scepticism | Gorgias, Pyrrho, Carneades, Sextus Empiricus; Montaigne, Hume | Self-contradictory; error is accidental and correctable |
| Subjectivism | Taine | Awareness of outer-seeming states already exceeds pure subjectivity; collapses into scepticism |
| Positivism | Comte, Spencer | Its own thesis is not a sense-datum; destroys science by excluding causes |
| Relativism | Protagoras, Kant, James | Asserts an absolute truth that truth is relative; destroys inference |
| Innatism | — | Not required to explain ideas; conflicts with introspection |
| Idealism / ego-projection | — | Requires the subjective to present itself as its opposite; the habit explanation regresses |
| Nominalism | (no one named) | Makes science impossible, since science deals in universal laws |
| Conceptualism | — | Universals without foundation in things cannot ground objective knowledge |
| Ultra-Realism | Plato, William of Champeaux, Hegel, Schelling | Inadmissible; leaves Moderate Realism as the only remaining doctrine |
| Instinct as criterion | Scottish Common Sense School | A blind compulsion manifests nothing; it sways rather than shows |
| Sensibility as criterion | Jacobi | Same defect — no power to manifest truth as such |
| Utility as criterion | Pragmatism, William James | ”Works for what?” presupposes a prior independent standard |
| Authority as ultimate criterion | Fideism (Huet), Traditionalism (De Bonald), universal consent (De Lamennais) | Authority must itself be grounded in knowledge and truthfulness, which presupposes direct evidence |
| Self-awareness (the mind with its clear and distinct knowledge) | Protagoras, Kant, Galuppi | Subjective; accepting it still requires reasons for the acceptance, so it cannot be the ultimate criterion |
| Rationalism | — | Inadmissible; reason does not exhaust the knowable |
Disputed points
Exaggerated versus Qualified Dogmatism (Th. 17) — the one live intra-scholastic disagreement in the tract, and Glenn takes a firm side.
Exaggerated Dogmatism (his term is a note that the label was applied by opponents, not by adherents) asserts the three primary truths at the outset. Qualified Dogmatism — Cardinal Mercier’s approach — refuses to begin with them and instead studies the mind’s spontaneous assents, inferring validity from the fact that judgments square with reality. Mercier’s image: a good digestion is the only proof of the stomach’s ability to digest.
Glenn concedes that both systems rest on the same basis, evidence, and that the roots of demonstration are the same. But he then argues at length against the qualified position: it assumes the primary truths however warily it moves to avoid them (there is no question of digestion unless the stomach’s existence is granted); reflection on the mind’s acts is worthless unless non-contradiction is tacitly assumed; and neutrality is in any case impossible, since to declare that one must have no position on the primary truths is itself a very definite position. He judges Exaggerated Dogmatism “the more forthright and scientific” and says the qualified party speaks of it unfairly.
Key terms
— adequatio intellectus et rei · conformity of mind and thing
— trans-subjective · having existence independent of the knowing mind
— intra-organic / extra-organic object · the impression on the organ / the thing in the world — proper and common sensibles · known by one sense / by several
— per accidens sensible · known through experienced association
— objective evidence · the intelligibility of things as they present themselves
— dogma (in this tract) · a self-evident truth
— tabula rasa · the mind prior to sensation
— consensus gentium · universal human consent
— dictum de omni / de nullo · the axioms grounding syllogistic validity
Reading it properly
Two articles carry the tract. B1 C1 A2 (the process of knowing) is where realism is won or lost — the claim that the medium is not consciously recognised as a medium is doing enormous work in four lines, and everything in Book III Chapter 3 depends on it. B3 C2 A1 (dogmatism) is where the tract confronts its own circularity, and is the honest place to start if you are sceptical of the whole enterprise.