1. The basic assumptions listed earlier in this blog,
The natural world exists
The natural world exists independent of our minds.
The natural world is orderly.
The order of the natural world is contingent.
Humans are able to know this natural contingent order.
2. Philosophical Common sense or Common Sense Philosophy
Common sense refers to the spontaneous activity of the intellect, the way in which it operates of its own native vigor before it has been given any special training. It implies man's native capacity to know the most fundamental aspects of reality
Philosophy is linked to common sense in that both concern themselves with the most fundamental aspects of reality. In particular, philosophy concerns itself with the existence of things (including our own existence), the first principles of being (identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle), and secondary principles which flow immediately from the self-evident principles (causality, sufficient reason, etc.).
While common sense utilizes these principles, it does so unconsciously, unreflectively, and uncritically. Faulty education, cultural prejudice, deceptive sense imagery can distort and obscure common sense. Philosophy seeks to use these principles critically, consciously, scientifically (i.e., intellectually, rationally, and through causes); and thus can defend and communicate its knowledge.
Another link between common sense and philosophy is that they both take in (seek to know) all of reality. Saying that philosophy knows the totality of reality does not mean that any one philosopher can claim omniscience. Rather, it refers to the fact that all of reality is the subject matter of the philosopher’s inquiry because he takes as his point of view the highest and first principles, the ultimate causes, of all reality. Philosophy, as well as common sense, seeks to develop a comprehensive, all encompassing view of reality – in short, the knowledge of all things.
True philosophy, then, grows out of common sense. Any philosophy, therefore, that strays very far from common sense is suspect. If it goes so far as to contradict the basic certitudes of common sense, then it is guilty of denying reality itself, and on this point common sense can pass judgment on it.
Philosophy is a tool to help us move from the realm of human experience – things we can feel and touch, see, taste and smell – towards reaching what is objectively true. Philosophical inquiry does not leave the enquirer confused and lost in ideas but marks the first step in clearly reaching an understanding of life and its meaning.
3. Logic
Logic is the tool, the means by which we are able to “do” philosophy (or science for that matter). With this tool in hand, we are able to attain certain and irrefutable knowledge through clear, logical reasoning.
Knowledge – How I Know Things
In common language, knowledge refers to anything that I take as certain no matter how I arrived at that certainty.
So how do I come to know things? How do I come to know with certainty?
There are basically three categories of knowledge: sense knowledge, intellectual knowledge, and belief (faith).
- Sense Knowledge
The most direct knowledge of the world comes to me from my senses or from sense experience. The most direct way for me to know something is to experience it with my senses – to taste it, feel it, see it, hear it, or smell it. Indeed all human knowledge begins with the senses. I know, have direct sensory experience, that there are many things that exist in the world, trees, cars, bicycles, children, adults, dogs, etc. This type of knowledge is the most obvious.
This sense knowledge is attained in two stages. First, my sense organs (eye, ear, nose, mouth, and skin) – my outer senses – when stimulated - produce a sensation characteristic of a particular sense (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch).
The sensation then is passed to my inner senses. These inner senses are located within my brain and nervous system. For simplicity sake, these can be divided into three components, the central sense, the imagination, and the memory. The central sense receives sensations and integrates them into a singular composite representation called a percept through a process called perception.
For example in sense experience I perceive a rose. This is an individual large, deep red rose with a very sweet pleasant fragrance, a long green stem with very long pointed and sharp thorns. All these sensations and possibly others are incorporated into the single percept whereby I perceive this particular rose.
With imagination, I can reconstitute the elements that entered into the percept of the rose, and in its absence, I can imagine the rose. I can imagine it as it actually was or I can imagine it in an embellished way, for example as a yellow rose. I can remember the rose as it was in the past utilizing memory to recall the particular percept. In this way, I build up sense experience by accumulating memory of all the percepts I have experienced in my lifetime.
2. Intellectual Knowledge
This large database then is drawn upon by my intellect. I am capable of acquiring a deeper knowledge through my mind or intellect. My mind enables me to transcend the knowledge of the individual things (trees, cars, bicycles, children, adults, dogs, etc.) provided to me by my senses. My intellect is capable of grasping the natures of things as they are in themselves, through universals. Universals are less obvious to us, but with them I am able to go beyond the surface appearances of things as presented by my senses.
In effect, my intellect works on my sense experience by focusing on the percept and extracting various intelligible aspects of it creating a universal concept. This is accomplished in two stages. First the intellect illuminates the percept in a particular way. Then under this illumination, it abstracts intelligible content from the percept. The percept is a concrete and singular image of a thing perceived (the rose). The concept is an abstract and universal representation that furnishes me with an idea of what I perceived (rose-ness). The concept is abstract because it was abstracted from the particulars of my sense knowledge. It is universal because it grasps the nature of the particular – what it means to be a rose. I am able then to apply the concept to all objects that I perceive share the same nature as the rose. The concept then is a universal idea or meaning. In this way, I build up many concepts in my mind.
Types of Concepts
The concepts developed as described above are said to be natural concepts because they arise from sense knowledge of nature. These concepts can be understood simply on the basis of ordinary experience of the world.
Such concepts can be classified in terms of the two intellectual processes by which they are formed, illumination and abstraction. Abstraction can provide various degrees of abstractness depending on how the precept is illuminated by the intellect. Generally, three orders of abstraction can be delineated providing us with three basic types of concepts: natural concepts, mathematical concepts, and metaphysical concepts.
Natural Concepts
Consider the precept “this rose”.
Natural concepts are associated with the first order of abstraction in which the intellect leaves aside the individual and concrete aspects of the precept, the “this”. In this way I come to the universal of “rose”. I am no longer tied to a particular, unique rose, but the natural concept of “rose”, the blossom of any and every rose bush. I grasp the meaning that is common to all classes of objects that share the properties of “rose”. The natural concept refers to objects that exist in matter as it is perceived by our senses, what we call sensible matter. One of the characteristics of such matter is that it is always capable of undergoing change.
Mathematical Concepts
Associated with the second order of abstraction, mathematical concepts are more abstract due to the fact that more is left aside when they are conceptualized. Consider the precepts “three roses” and “wooden ball” and the concepts of “three” and “sphere” that may be abstracted from them. “Three” and “sphere” are both mathematical concepts referring to all classes of things that share the number “three” and geometrical shape “sphere”. These concepts do not reference anything sensible. The “three” does not contain any reference to roses but merely indicates a group of units that are only imaginable. “Sphere” does not refer to an object being composed of wood, metal, or plastic. Rather, it indicates a body composed of continuous quantity, an imaginable or intelligible matter that does not exhibit any sensible qualities.
Metaphysical Concepts
Metaphysical concepts are the most abstract of all for they are separated entirely from matter and contain no reference to individual, sensible, or intelligible matter. Examples of metaphysical concepts are “being” and “existent”. The concept of “being” expresses an intelligible content that is found in roses, balls, and mathematical objects. All of these are beings in some sense. Metaphysical concepts are very general and apply to being as such, not just to objects in sensible matter (changeable being) or intelligible matter (quantified being). Metaphysical concepts apply to whatever “is” including things that are completely immaterial, incorporeal, or spiritual (for example, the concept of God – assuming such things do indeed exist - but we will get to that in a later post).
Natural concepts, mathematical concepts, and metaphysical concepts are all concepts drawn from the real world by various degrees of abstraction and so are termed real concepts. Real concepts are formed in the intellect, but they are concepts of things that exist outside the intellect and they enable me to grasp the natures of such things.
Logical Concepts
But I also have concepts of concepts. These logical concepts are completely existent in my mind. They have no independent existence outside my mind.
Grammatical concepts are logical concepts. Consider I have the concepts of “rose” and “red”. From these, I can formulate a proposition or sentence, “The rose is red”. Further, I can formulate two more sentences from this one: “Rose is the subject” and “Red is the predicate”. In so doing, I have developed two more concepts: “subject” and “predicate” – which reveal how “rose” and “red” relate to each other in the sentence “The rose is red”. “Rose” and “redness” exist outside my mind but “subject” and “predicate” do not.
Logical concepts are universals of a special kind, the most important of which are of two types: predicables and categories. Predicables are referred to as modes of predication (assignment of something to a class), whereas categories are referred to as modes of being (how something “is”).
Predicables
There are five predicables: genus, species, differentia, property, and accident. While genus and species share a common name to taxonomic classifications used in modern biology, they should not be confused with them.
Genus describes many things that differ in species. Genus answers the question “what is it?” For example, humans, butterflies, and starfish are said to be of the same genus since they all fall under the category of “animal”.
Species is the universal of many things that differ only in number again in answer to the question “what is it?”. Einstein and Aristotle belong to the species “human” because they share in human nature, common to all individuals in the species “human”.
Differentia is the qualitative part of the nature of things that differ in number and also species. Man is rational for rationality is what distinguishes humans from all the other species of “animals”.
Property is the universal said of a species as belonging exclusively, necessarily, and always to a species and its individuals. An example would be "scientifically teachable," since only humans are capable of learning a science or other intellectual discipline.
Accident is the universal said of a species as belonging contingently to the species and its individuals. “White” as said of humans is a predicable accident since it does not pertain to the essence of being human to be white.
Universality is found more properly in essential predicates than in those that do not indicate the essence of the subject. Of the essential predicates, the genus is more universal than the species, and so these predicates are given first as substantial predicates. After them comes differentia as a qualitative predicate. And finally we have property and accident as predicates that are yet more distant from the essence of the subjects to which they are being attributed.
Categories
The ten basic categories designate modes of being. The first is substance, and other nine are quantity, quality, relation, location, time, disposition (the arrangement of parts), rainment (being clothed, armed, etc.), action, and passion. These are the basic or ultimate groups into which real entities may be classified.
Substance is unique in that it exists in itself, does not exist in another, and cannot be said of another. Accidents exist in another and cannot exist in themselves but must exist in a substance. Substance then sustains accidents in their being. Accidents are the modifications that substances undergo, but that do not change the kind of thing that each substance is. Accidents only exist when they are the accidents of some substance.
These categories reflect the basic distinction in the way reality is stuctured and reflect the basic way that I view reality. The fundamental distinction is between substance and accident. Substance is whatever is a natural kind of thing and exists in its own right. Examples are rocks, trees, animals, etc. What an animal is, a dog for example, is basically the same whether it is black or brown, here or there, etc. A dog is a substance since it exists in its own right; it does not exist in something else, the way a color does.
All these distinctions are basically logical, but in a sense they reflect the structure of reality. I never find any substance that I experience without some accidents, nor an accident that is not the accident of a substance. Every dog, for instance, has some color, place, size. Nevertheless, it is obvious that what a dog is is not the same as its color, or its size, etc
Scientific Reasoning (in Philosophy)
In philosophy, scientific reasoning, in its strictest sense, means reasoning that leads to certain and irrefutable knowledge of the causes of things in the world. The process involved is demonstration which depends on a special type of syllogism termed demonstrative regress.
Causes, by definition, are followed by their effects. A cause is prior and the effect is posterior. In my search for knowledge, I can begin with a cause and reason to its effect. This is a priori reasoning.
Often though, I am only able to observe effects in the world, the causes of which are hidden or unclear to me. In these cases, I can begin with the effects and reason my way to their causes. This is a posteriori reasoning. To be certain, however, I would need then to later reverse the procedure and reason a priori back to the effects.
This twofold reasoning process is called demonstrative regression. The first a posteriori stage, moving from effect to cause, individual to universal, is the process of induction. Induction is the primary reasoning method of modern science. Deduction is the second a priori stage in which I move from the cause back to the effect in order to explain the effect from its cause.
Induction, a posteriori reasoning, usually begins with observations made about the world. It begins with individual, singular objects/events perceived by the senses. It concludes with the discovery of causes or explanatory principles for the effects observed. These causes or principles are universals grasped by my intellect. The second process, deduction, uses the causes or principles, the universals, to return to the observations which I now recognize as effects. I understand them in terms of the factors that make them what they are.
I accomplish this demonstrative regression through the work of my intellect. Let’s see how this is accomplished using an example.
I observe that the moon exhibits phases. Through inductive reasoning, I arrive at a possible cause for this. I can express this in a statement or proposition. The moon exhibits phases because it is a sphere.
Restating and identifying the grammatical components I arrive at:
The moon (Subject) exhibits phases (Predicate) because it is a sphere (Middle term).
I can now write the proposition in the form of a syllogism.
A sphere (M) exhibits phases (P).
M is P
The moon (S) is a sphere (M).
S is M
Therefore, the moon (S) exhibits phases (P).
S is P
This is an a posteriori argument and a demonstration. Now, I can turn the demonstration into an a priori demonstration by interchanging its middle term and predicate. This gives us the following:
A body that exhibits phases (M) is a sphere (P).
M is P
The moon (S) exhibits phases (M).
S is M
Therefore, the moon (S) is a sphere (P).
S is P
If both the a posteriori and a priori demonstrations are logically consistent, valid, and true, then I have shown that indeed the moon exhibits phases because it is a sphere, and I have certainty of this knowledge.
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