The Passive and Active Intellects
Or
How exactly are concepts formed in human beings?
By: Dr. F. F. Centore
To know means grasping the common aspect apart from individuating aspects.
How can the intellect come to know the essence of a material thing? What
follows might be the case.
We know the two ends of the process; we speculate about what goes on
in between.
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Essences are not empirical.
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They are not actually intelligible, but potentially intelligible.
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Some active agent is needed for the transition from the potential
to
the actual.
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Sensible species--sensible things are actually sensible.
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The percept--combination of sensible species by the synthetic sense.
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The Image--a remembered percept.
| The Phantasm |
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either a percept or image
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starting point of intellectual cognition
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essence in phantasm is potentially intelligible
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red rose not just red.
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| Agent intellect |
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not little man inside mind.
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like an X-ray.
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"Abstraction" is the illumination of the phantasm by the Active Intellect.
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We are not directly conscious of the Active Intellect.
|
Impressed intelligible species -- abstracted essece.
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Why a species? -- because it makes the act of knowledge
specific.
I.e., knowing horse rather than rose, etc.
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The species is not what is known but is rather that by
which we know.
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Why intelligible? -- because it is above the sense level. Also, it is still
only -ble and not actually known.
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Why impressed? -- upon passive or possible intellect.
Possible intellect -- does actual knowing.
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knowledge is an act of the possible intellect and not the impressed intelligible
species.
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possible intellect moved from potency to act -- possible intellect expresses
its object.
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result is expressed intelligible species or concept.
Concept -- knower becomes the known without destroying the known.
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knowledge is not in the knower like beans in a jar.
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no thing in the intellect. Rather, the intellect is specified in
a certain way.
Mind knows only while knowing.
Concepts do not exist before produced by mind.
One essence has both physical and intentional existence.
Mind depends upon senses to know individuals.
Essence includes matter and form.
Ego transcends its acts. Ego knows itself through its acts.
Ego knows objects, then its own activity, then the nature of itself.
Man is a psycho-somatic composite.
The presence of things in us is a condition for the birth (conception)
of ideas.
In abstraction the mind considers one aspect of
a thing apart from its numerous other aspects. In reality, though, all
aspects exist together simultaneously outside the mind. Far from being
deceptive, abstraction is man's only way of knowing intellectually. Man
cannot know everything at a glance but must gather knowledge piece-meal.
A man must often learn by contemplation what he already knows implicitly--that
is,, by reflecting upon what has been abstracted--i.e., each species belongs
to a genus, but the genus cannot be known before one species is compared
with another.
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