Tag: First Principles

“Intellect” as Culminative Intuition

Once or twice before, I’ve somewhere mentioned the issue of interpreting the remarks Aristotle makes about intellect (nous) in the Posterior Analytics. Some people read this text as attributing to intellect a kind of immediate grasp that they associate with intuition. I have even seen nous translated as intuition.

If intuition is supposed to be immediate in an unqualified way, I don’t think this interpretation can be reconciled with Aristotle’s view that although there is what he calls an inner sense, the soul does not have direct self-knowledge, but only self-knowledge of an indirect sort.

My late father was quite impressed by Kant and Hegel’s critique of the notion that intuition is a source of immediate knowledge, but he also used to distinguish “culminative intuition” from “originary intuition”. This seems very useful to me. Originary intuition is the immediate kind that some people claim to have, but is rejected by Kant and Hegel. Culminative intuition on the other hand arguably resembles what the Arabic philosophers called “acquired intellect”. That is, it is an end result of a long process (see also Long Detour?; First Principles Come Last; Adeptio). One of my very first posts here suggested that Aristotle and Plato would have been sympathetic to the inferentialist account of reason propounded by Robert Brandom. Brandom himself reads Kant and Hegel as inferentialists.

Google returns zero references to culminative intuition on the internet. Now at least there will be one. If a kind of intuition does have a kind of immediacy, I think it must be what Hegel called mediated immediacy, which is like knowing how to ride a bicycle. That is, it depends on a process of learning, but eventually acquires a kind of immediacy.

Aristotle on the Platonic Good

“Philosophy begins with wonder not that there are things rather than not, but that they are as they are” (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 1, p. 33, my translation throughout).

Here Aubry refers to Aristotle’s famous statement in book capital Alpha of the Metaphysics that philosophy begins in wonder. In the 20th century, Heidegger emphasized the question why there is something rather than nothing. Aubry is pointing out that that is not Aristotle’s question at all. As detailed in many posts here, it is the more particular what-it-is of things that Aristotle is mainly concerned to explain.

“Two texts, in Lambda and Nu, echo the critique of capital Alpha, and each time the insistence of Aristotle is the same, in underlining that he is, of all the philosophers, the first and the only to have posed the good as a principle” (ibid).

Of Aristotle’s four causes, the material cause and the source of motion were generally recognized by the pre-Socratics. The Pythagoreans and Platonists added something approximating to Aristotle’s formal cause. But Aristotle insists that even the Platonists made no real use of a concept of that-for-the-sake-of-which, and confusingly treated the good as a formal cause or as a source of motion instead.

In book Nu of the Metaphysics, according to Aubry he says that Plato’s successor Speusippus and the Pythagoreans “agree with the mythologists in seeing the good not as a principle but as an effect of order…. Beyond Speusippus, the allusion is to Plato…; the error of Plato is not in having posed the good as a principle in making it an attribute of the One, but in having made the One itself the principle” (p. 39).

The relevant passage in book Nu says, “Things that come down to us from those who wrote about the gods seem to agree with some people of the present time who say that the good and the beautiful are not sources but make their appearance within the nature of things when it has advanced. (They do this out of caution about a true difficulty which follows for those who say, as some do, that the one is a source. The difficulty is not on account of reckoning what is good to the source as something present in it, but on account of making the one a source — and a source in the sense of an element — and making number out of the one)” (Metaphysics, Sachs tr., pp. 291-292).

Aubry’s point rings true. Elsewhere Aristotle goes on at length about Speusippus’ and the Pythagoreans’ insistence on the central role of number, which gestures in the direction of a formal cause but is actually treated by them more like a kind of material cause. And when Speusippus and the Pythagoreans talk about the One, they seem to literally mean the number one. As Aristotle points out repeatedly, it is nonsense to make the number one the source of all things, and this also doesn’t explain anything.

I myself for many years simply accepted at face value an identity of the Platonic Good with the One as the source of all things, while downplaying the One’s connection with the mere number one, and emphasizing a sort of negative theology in the style of Plotinus, which eliminates all positive attributes of the One. This really just comes down to saying there is a source of all things, while leaving unclear the way in which it is a source. It also assumes the Platonic thesis — rejected by Aristotle — that there is a single form of the Good.

For Aristotle, the good is said in as many ways as being is. What is essential is not this good or that good, but the relevance of value and valuation to all judgment whatsoever and all doing whatsoever. That relevance appears concretely as that-for-the-sake-of-which, or “final” causality. This was Aristotle’s huge innovation.

Aubry reviews Aristotle’s critique of the Platonic Good in both the Nicomachean and the Eudemian Ethics, which focuses on its status as a universal or an Idea.

“Aristotle underlines that there is not a unique science of the Good, but multiple sciences having for their object different goods” (p. 44).

“To the Good as a genus — undiscoverable — and as Idea — useless and void — Aristotle opposes a good that is prakton [practical, in the ethical sense], a good realizable by the human, determined as the first term of a hierarchy of goods and ends, … which the Nicomachean Ethics calls ‘politics’…. If the critique of the Platonic Good leaves open this path, which the Ethics explore, it does not close off that which consists in posing a Good as principle, the relation of which to particular goods remains to be determined, and of the sort that it is neither that of a genus nor of a species, nor that of an Idea to its participants” (p. 45).

Once again, it will be only the causality of that-for-the-sake-of-which and the related details of act and potentiality that truly explain this relation.

Next in this series: Being and Becoming

Aristotelian “Wisdom”

Aristotle is conventionally considered to regard theoria (reflective “contemplation”) and sophia (the reflective wisdom concerning causes and principles discussed in the Metaphysics) as superior to praxis (ethical doing) and phronesis (reflective judgment about ethical doing). This is often represented in terms of modern contrasts of “theory” versus “practice”, and Aristotle is then claimed to regard theory as superior to practice. I think this seriously misrepresents Aristotle’s meaning.

Reflective wisdom concerning causes and principles provides higher-order grounding for reflective judgment about first-order ethical doing. In the life of human beings, however, these are only analytically distinct. They are features of the continuum of reflection within which we orient ourselves.

Aristotle speaks of reflection as valuable for its own sake, and not only for the sake of something else. This is an important truth. But we also see the fruits of reflective wisdom (or the lack of it) in ethical doing.

I think that in addition to being valuable for its own sake, reflective wisdom is also “for the sake of” ethical doing. Every instance of ethical doing can be seen as manifesting some high or low degree of reflective wisdom, and from an Aristotelian point of view, this concrete manifestation has an irreducible place in the scheme of things.

The Knowledge Sought

Following the emphasis of al-Farabi on demonstrative “science”, the Latin scholastic tradition treated “metaphysics” as a completed science. Some writers attributed such a completed science to Aristotle, while others, following in the wake of Avicenna, put forward their own improvements.

With respect to being, Aristotle himself speaks of knowledge sought rather than possessed. In inquiring about being “as such”, he is exploring a question given prominence by others. Far from claiming to have final knowledge of being as such, he highlights the ambiguity of “being”. There can be no “as such” — and hence no final knowledge — of an ambiguous thing.

This is not the end of the story, however. The very first sentence of the Metaphysics is “All human beings by nature stretch themselves out toward knowing. A sign of this is our love of the senses; for even apart from their use, they are loved on their own account (book capital Alpha (I), ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 1).

We are after knowledge of something. It is just not clear that that something would be accurately characterized as “being”, full stop.

“[A] sign of the one who knows and the one who does not is being able to teach, and for this reason we regard the art, more than the experience, to be knowledge” (p. 2).

“Further, we consider none of the senses to be wisdom, even though they are the most authoritative ways of knowing particulars; but they do not pick out the why of anything” (ibid).

“[T]he person with experience seems wiser than those who have any perception whatever, the artisan wiser than those with experience, the master craftsman wiser than the manual laborer, and the contemplative arts more so than the productive ones. It is apparent, then, that wisdom is a knowledge concerned with certain sources and causes” (p. 3).

This concern with sources and causes, with the why, is the true subject matter of the Metaphysics. This is emphasized again at length in book Epsilon (VI).

“Since we are seeking this knowledge, this should be examined: about what sort of causes and what sort of sources wisdom is the knowledge. Now if one takes the accepted opinions we have about the wise man, perhaps from this it will become more clear. We assume first that the wise man knows all things, in the way that is possible, though he does not have knowledge of them as particulars. Next, we assume that the one who is able to know things that are difficult, and not easy for a human being to know, is wise; for perceiving is common to everyone, for which reason it is an easy thing and nothing wise. Further, we assume the one who has more precision and is more able to teach the causes is wiser concerning each kind of knowledge. And among the kinds of knowledge, we assume the one that is for its own sake and chosen for the sake of knowing more to be wisdom than the one chosen for the sake of results” (ch. 2, p. 3).

“Now of these, the knowing of all things must belong to the one who has most of all the universal knowledge, since he knows in a certain way all the things that come under it; and these are just about the most difficult things for human beings to know, those that are most universal, since they are farthest away from the senses. And the most precise kinds of knowledge are the ones that are most directed at first things, since those that reason from fewer things are more precise than those that reason from extra ones” (p. 4).

For long I struggled with this last statement. How could a knowledge of first things be the most precise of all? In the Topics, he says that first principles can only be investigated by dialectic: “[T]his task belongs properly, or most appropriately, to dialectic; for dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all inquiries” (Collected Works, Barnes ed., p. 168).

Some commentators — influenced by al-Farabi and the subsequent tradition’s overwhelming emphasis on the place of demonstration as opposed to dialectic in Aristotle — have considered it a puzzle or a defect that the Metaphysics and other Aristotelian texts do not seem to consist in demonstrations as described in the Prior Analytics. The answer is that the Metaphysics and the others generally do follow the model of dialectic articulated in the Topics, as the Topics itself says they ought to.

Returning to the Metaphysics, Aristotle has already stressed that the most universal knowledge is also the most difficult. Also, he standardly distinguishes between how things are “in themselves” and how they are “for us”. The knowledge of first things would be most precise in itself, not necessarily for us in our relative achievement of it.

To anticipate, I think the final conclusion of the Metaphysics will be something like “All things are ultimately moved by love of the good”. The qualification “ultimately” is essential to making sense of this.

(For Aristotle himself, all becoming and terrestrial motion are grounded in — though not in detail determined by — the entelechy or entelechies of circular celestial motion. The stars are a kind of everlasting living beings endowed with superior intellect, and are directly moved by love of the first cause. This might seem quaint to modern people. I find the love part beautiful in a poetic sort of way, but think Aristotle’s theoretical astronomy in general and his views of the special status of celestial objects have relatively little impact on interpretation of the rest of his work — particularly with respect to the teleology affecting earthly things and the discussions here in the Metaphysics.)

Plato says that the Good surpasses all things in ancientness and power. He represents Socrates as provocatively arguing that all beings desire the good, regardless of how confused they may be about what the good really is. No one deliberately and self-consciously desires what they recognize as evil. That is impossible, because it is logically self-contradictory. For the same reason, there also could not be a “principle” of evil. This is a tremendously powerful thought, of unparalleled importance for ethics. It sets a fundamental tone of charitable interpretation, in diametrical contrast to the kind of point of view that says those people over there are just evil.

Aristotle, however, says that Plato does not clearly explain the mode of activity of the Good, or how it acts as a cause. According to Aristotle, when Plato does gesture in this direction, he lapses into treating the Good as either a formal cause or an efficient cause, or both. But speaking in terms of formal or efficient causality loses what is most essential about the good — what many contemporary philosophers would call its normative character.

Aristotle considered his own contribution in this area to be a thorough account of how all things are ultimately moved by that for the sake of which, and of how the Good indirectly influences things just as that for the sake of which. This, once again, is what Kant called “internal teleology”.

After the horrors of the 20th century, many people have lost faith in the fundamental goodness of life. This is basically an emotional response. The indubitable factuality of horrendous evil in the world is not an Aristotelian or Hegelian actuality, and does not touch actuality. The factuality of evil does pose a roadblock for common interpretations of particular providence or “external” teleology, but not for Aristotelian or Hegelian teleology.

But how could a knowledge of first things be exact? We certainly don’t have knowledge of the first cause in itself. But coming back to my formulation “All things are ultimately moved by love of the good”, this does meet Aristotle’s criterion of simplicity: all things are said to be ultimately moved by one thing (even though more directly, they are moved by their own love of whatever they do love, which seems good to them within the limits of their understanding).

We have exact knowledge neither of the first cause in itself nor of the particulars we encounter in life, but perhaps we can after all have exact, certain knowledge that “All things are ultimately moved by love of the good”. This is the kind of thing I think Aristotle is suggesting. (See also Aristotle on Explanation.)

Next in this series: The Four Causes Revisited

Husserl on Normativity

Translator J. N. Findlay ranks Husserl (1859-1938) with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, and calls Husserl’s Logical Investigations (1899-1901) his greatest work. My previous acquaintance with Husserl has been limited to his later, explicitly “phenomenological” period.

In the first two chapters, Husserl surveys and criticizes the then-dominant views of Utilitarian John Stuart Mill and his followers on the nature of logic, objecting that they reduced it to a “technology dependent on psychology” (p. 56). Frege had already introduced mathematical logic, but the great flowering of the latter had not occurred yet. Husserl in these chapters is particularly concerned with the objectivity of knowledge, and with principles of validation.

I was initially confused by his polemic against the claim that logic is a “normative discipline”. To me, “normative” means “axiological”, i.e., concerned with value judgments. I take the Aristotelian view that judgment refers first of all to a process of evaluation, rather than a conclusion. In this sense, judgment and normativity inherently involve a Socratic dimension of genuinely open inquiry about what is good.

All versions of normativity involve a “should”. But it turns out that the view Husserl is polemicizing against treated a “normative discipline” as one that takes some particular and predetermined end for granted, and is only concerned with what we “should” do to realize that predetermined end. On this view, “normativity” is only concerned with necessary and/or sufficient conditions for achieving predetermined ends. Thus Husserl associates it with a sort of technology, rather than with something ultimately ethical. So, what he is doing here is rejecting a merely technological view of normativity.

There is also a theoretical-versus-practical axis to Husserl’s argument. Aristotle had contrasted the ability to successfully perform an operation with the ability to explain the principles governing it. One does not necessarily imply the other. Husserl notes how many activities in life are merely oriented toward operational success, and says that most of the practice of modern sciences — including mathematics — has a mainly operational character.

Elsewhere I have contrasted “tool-like” reason with what I like to call ethical reason, but I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, and my notion of “tool-like” reason has potentially rather more positive connotations than that toward which Husserl seems to be leading. I don’t take the fact that engineering tends to drive science to be inherently bad. I think engineering can drive science in a good way, involving an integral consideration of ends; a concern with good design guided by those ends and the best practices we can come up with; and a recognition that the real world doesn’t always cooperate with our intentions.

On the other hand, I also find that the best engineering relies more on fundamental theoretical insight and well-rounded judgment than on sheer technology. This is a perspective that is simultaneously “practical” and concerned with first principles. When Husserl argues for the priority of theoretical disciplines over practical ones, he is mainly arguing for the importance of a concern for first principles. While I generally prefer the Kantian/Brandomian primacy of practical reason, I find common ground with Husserl in the concern for principles.

First Principles?

The works of Aristotle as they have come down to us include what seem to be nearly opposite statements about the knowledge of first principles. Book 1 of the Topics, Aristotle’s treatise on dialectic, says that dialectic, which assumes no pre-existing truth and does not yield certain conclusions, turns out to be the best way to the investigate first principles.

However, striking a much more Platonic note, book 1 of the Metaphysics says that knowledge of first principles or “wisdom” is the most difficult of all, but is also the most exact kind of the knowledge in the strong sense that is often translated as “science”. This is said to include knowledge of goods or ends, along with other sorts of causes. But then again, book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics insists that ethics and the practical judgment associated with it are necessarily inexact. This latter difference seems to have to do the status of first principles as universals, in contrast to the concern of ethics with particular actions.

While book 1 of the Metaphysics is a beautiful text with many valuable insights, the idea that knowledge of first principles could be what is most exact seems incongruous to me. It seems to assume an unequivocal priority of universals over particulars, whereas I think the overall balance of Aristotle’s work shows a much more even-handed view. The ethics, the dialectic, the biological works all take a more nuanced approach. My favorite part of the diverse collection that is the Metaphysics is the very dialectical part in the middle about substance, potentiality, and actuality. (See also Interpretation; What and Why; First Principles Come Last.)

Aristotelian and Hegelian Dialectic

When Hegel talked about dialectic instead of just using it, he occasionally made it sound as if dialectic governed events in the world. This is a loose, popular way of speaking that should not be taken literally. Dialectic is the main tool of the forward progress of philosophical criticism, and thus indirectly helps refine our understanding of the world and events in it. It could not directly drive events.

It is actually very hard to draw a sharp line between the world “in itself” and our understanding of it, because our understanding (in the general, not the specifically Hegelian sense) is all we actually have to go on. Our sense of the world in itself is permeated by artifacts of our understanding, because it comes entirely from our understanding.

But then it turns out that our understanding is not just some private, subjective thing of ours. Our understanding participates in the world, and is part of it. The cultivation of shareable thought grounds objectivity in (our sense of) the world. Much of the content of shareable thought comes to us from outside. In a poetic manner of speaking, it could be said that the world thinks itself through us. But in a more direct way, we are the agents and stewards of the world’s thought. In particular, it advances through us. There is thus no wall between our understanding and the world. There is a meaningful distinction, but the content of shareable thought straddles the boundary, so to speak.

Aristotle’s version of dialectic is much less famous nowadays, but a great deal easier to understand, and it does not require apologetics of the sort I just provided for Hegel’s. It uses logic and semantics to analyze the meaning of things said, making no assumption whether or not they are grounded in knowledge.

Aristotle explicitly said (Topics, book 1) that this is the way to investigate first principles (i.e., starting points) of knowledge. With respect to such starting points, we have no possibility of knowledge in the strong sense (episteme) — which requires development — but only a kind of initial personal acquaintance or familiarity (gnosis), as he said in Posterior Analytics.

There has been a strong tradition of misinterpretation of this latter passage. With no textual basis, many people who wanted to read Stoic-style foundationalism back into Aristotle — or were influenced by others with this sort of motivation — have glossed Aristotelian gnosis as something like a strong intellectual intuition, and claimed Aristotle was saying first principles of knowledge were better known in a strong sense, rather than just more familiar. (See also Aristotelian Demonstration.)

Aristotle’s actual practice, however, confirms the reading of first principles of knowledge as themselves objects of mere familiarity rather than strong knowledge. (Aristotle’s loftier principles are ends, not starting points of knowledge, and he typically places discussion of them at the end of an inquiry.) His starting points for inquiries are very pragmatic. He typically begins an inquiry with logical/semantic (i.e., “dialectical”) analysis of widely known opinions on the subject. He also explicitly recommends that we begin any inquiry from what is closer to us, and then, through analysis, refine our understanding. (See also The Epistemic Modesty of Plato and Aristotle).

The development of knowledge starts from what is close to us and easier to grasp, and becomes progressively more secure through the dialectical work we do on it. Aristotelian dialectic uses the same logical forms as demonstration, but is mainly concerned with inferential semantic analysis rather than deriving conclusions. (Even Aristotelian demonstration is concerned not so much with deriving conclusions, as with perspicuously showing their basis.) Aristotle does the great majority of his actual work with dialectic rather than demonstration.

Once one becomes familiar with the profile of the Aristotelian version, it becomes possible to see something very like it at the core of Hegel’s way of working — not so much in what he says about it, as in what he does. (See also Essence and Concept; Aristotelian Dialectic; Dialogue; Scholastic Dialectic; Contradiction vs Polarity; Three Logical Moments.)