Intellect
(Latin intelligere -- inter and legere -- to choose between, to
discern; Greek nous; German Vernunft, Verstand; French intellect;
Italian intelletto).
The faculty of thought. AS understood in Catholic philosophical
literature it signifies the higher, spiritual, cognitive power of
the soul. It is in this view awakened to action by sense, but
transcends the latter in range. Amongst its functions are
attention, conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-
consciousness. All these modes of activity exhibit a distinctly
suprasensuous element, and reveal a cognitive faculty of a higher
order than is required for mere sense-cognitions. In harmony,
therefore, with Catholic usage, we reserve the terms intellect,
intelligence, and intellectual to this higher power and its
operations, although many modern psychologists are wont, with much
resulting confusion, to extend the application of these terms so
as to include sensuous forms of the cognitive process. By thus
restricting the use of these terms, the inaccuracy of such phrases
as "animal intelligence" is avoided. Before such language may be
legitimately employed, it should be shown that the lower animals
are endowed with genuinely rational faculties, fundamentally one
in kind with those of man. Catholic philosophers, however they
differ on minor points, as a general body have held that intellect
is a spiritual faculty depending extrinsically, but not
intrinsically, on the bodily organism. The importance of a right
theory of intellect is twofold: on account of its bearing on
epistemology, or the doctrine of knowledge; and because of its
connexion with the question of the spirituality of the soul.
HISTORY
The view that the cognitive powers of the mind, or faculties of
knowledge, are of a double order -- the one lower, grosser, more
intimately depending on bodily organs, the other higher and of a
more refined and spiritual nature -- appeared very early, though
at first confusedly, in Greek thought. It was in connexion with
cosmological, rather than psychological, theories that the
difference between sensuous and rational knowledge was first
emphasized. On the one hand there seems to be constant change,
and, on the other hand, permanence in the world that is revealed
to us. The question: How is the apparent conflict to be
reconciled? or, Which is the true representation? forced itself on
the speculative mind. Heraclitus insists on the reality of the
changeable. All things are in a perpetual flux. Parmenides, Zeno,
and the Eleatics argued that only the unchangeable being truly is.
Aisthesis, "sense", is the faculty by which changing phenomena are
apprehended; nous, "thought", "reason", "intellect", presents to
us permanent, abiding being. The Sophists, with a skill
unsurpassed by modern Agnosticism, urged the sceptical
consequences of the apparent contradiction between the one and the
many, the permanent and the changing, and emphasized the part
contributed by the mind in knowledge. For Protagoras, "Man is the
measure of all things", whilst with Gorgias the conclusion is:
"Nothing is; nothing can be known; nothing can be expressed in
speech". Socrates held that truth was innate in the mind
antecedent to sensuous experience, but his chief contribution to
the theory of knowledge was his insistence on the importance of
the general concept or definition.
It was Plato, however, who first realized the full significance of
the problem and the necessity for coordinating the data of sense
with the data of the intellect, he also first explained the origin
of the problem. The universe of being, as reported by reason, is
one, eternal, immutable; as revealed by sense, it is a series of
multiple changing phenomena. Which is the truly real? For Plato
there are in a sense two worlds, that of the intellect (noeton)
and that of sense (horaton). Sense can give only an imperfect
knowledge of its object, which he calls belief (pistis) or
conjecture (eikasia). The faculties by which we apprehend the
noeton, "the intelligible world" are two: nous, "intuitive
reason", which reaches the ideas (see IDEA); and logos,
"discursive reason", which by its proper process, viz. episteme
"demonstration", attains only to dianoia "conception". Plato thus
sets up two distinct intellectual faculties attaining to different
sets of objects. But the world of ideas is for Plato the real
world, that of sense is only a poor shadowy imitation. Aristotle's
doctrine on the intellect in its main outline is clear. The soul
is possessed of two orders of cognitive faculty, to aisthetikon,
"sensuous cognition", and to dianoetikon "rational cognition" .
The sensuous faculty includes aisthesis, sensuous perception",
phantasia, "imagination", and mneme, memory". The faculty of
rational cognition includes nous and dianoia. These, however, are
not so much two faculties as two functions of the same power. They
roughly correspond to intellect and ratiocinative reason. For
intellect to operate, previous sense perception is required. The
function of the intellect is to divest the object presented by
sense of its material and individualizing conditions, and
apprehend the universal and intelligible form embodied in the
concrete physical reality. The outcome of the process is the
generalization in the intellect of an intellectual form or
representation of the intelligible being of the object (eidos,
noeton). This act constitutes the intellect cognizant of the
object in its universal nature. In this process intellect appears
in a double character. On the one hand it exhibits itself as an
active agent, in that it operates on the object presented by the
sensuous faculty rendering it intelligible. On the other hand, as
subject of the intellectual representation evolved, it manifests
passivity, modifiability, and susceptibility to the reception of
different forms. There is thus revealed in Aristotle's theory of
intellectual cognition an active intellect (nous poietikos) and a
passive intellect (nous pathetikos). But how these are to be
conceived, and what precisely is the nature of the distinction and
relation between them, is one of the most irritatingly obscure
points in the whole of Aristotle's works. The locus classicus is
his "De Anima", III, v, where the subject is briefly dealt with.
As the active intellect actuates the passive, it bears to it a
relation similar to that of form to matter in physical bodies. The
active intellect "illuminates" the object of sense, rendering it
intelligible somewhat as light renders colours visible. It is pure
energy without any potentiality, and its activity is continuous.
It is separate, immortal, and eternal. The passive intellect, on
the other hand, receives the forms abstracted by the active
intellect and ideally becomes the object. The whole passage is so
obscure that commentators from the beginning are hopelessly
divided as to Aristotle's own view on the nature of the nous
poietikos. Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle as scholiarch of
the Lyceum, accepted the twofold intellect, but was unable to
explain it. The great commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias,
interprets the nous poietikos as the activity of the Divine
intelligence. This view was adopted by many of the Arabian
philosophers of the Middle Ages, who conceived it in a pantheistic
sense. For many of them the active intellect is one universal
reason illuminating all men. With Avicenna the passive intellect
alone is individual. Averrho�s conceives both intellectus agens
and intellectus possibilis as separate from the individual soul
and as one in all men.
The Schoolmen generally controverted the Arabian theories.
Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas interpret intellectus agens and
possibilis as merely distinct faculties or powers of the
individual soul. St. Thomas understands "separate" (choristos) and
"pure" or "unmixed" (amiges) to signify that the intellect is
distinct from matter and incorporeal. Interpretting Aristotle thus
benevolently, and developing his doctrine Aquinas teaches that the
function of the active intellect is an abstractive operation on
the data supplied by the sensuous faculties to form the species
intelligibiles in the intellectus possibilis. The intellectus
possibilis thus actuated cognizes what is intelligible in the
object. The act of cognition is the concept, or verbum mentale, by
which is apprehended the universal nature or essence of the object
prescinded from its individualizing conditions. The main features
of the Aristotelean doctrine of intellect, and of its essential
distinction from the faculty of sensuous cognition, were adhered
to by the general body of the Schoolmen.
By the time we reach modern philosophy, especially in England, the
radical distinction between the two orders of faculties begins to
be lost sight of. Descartes, defending the spirituality of the
soul; naturally supposes the intellect to be a spiritual faculty.
Leibniz insists on both the spirituality and innate efficiency of
the intellect. Whilst admitting the axiom, "Nil est in intellectu
quod non prius fuerit in sensu", he adds with much force, "nisi
intellectus ipse", and urges spontaneity and innate activity as
characteristics of the monad. From the break with Scholasticism,
however, English philosophy drifted towards Sensationism and
Materialism, subsequently influencing France and other countries
in the same direction, as a consequence, the old conception of
intellect as a spiritual faculty of the soul, and as a cognitive
activity by which the universal, necessary, and immutable elements
in knowledge are apprehended, was almost entirely lost. For Hobbes
the mind is material, and all knowledge is ultimately sensuous.
Locke's attack on innate ideas and intuitive knowledge, his
reduction of various forms of intellectual cognition to complex
amalgams of so called simple ideas originating in sense
perception, and his representation of the mind as a passive tabula
rasa, in spite of his allotting certain work to reflection and the
discursive reason, paved the way for all modern Sensationism and
Phenomenalism. Condillac, omitting Locke's "reflection", resolved
all intellectual knowledge into Sensationism pure and simple.
Hume, analysing all mental Products into sensuous impressions,
vivid or faint, plus association due to custom, developed the
sceptical consequences involved in Locke's defective treatment of
the intellectual faculty, and carried philosophy back to the old
conclusions of the Greek Sensationists and Sophists, but
reinforced by a more subtile and acute psychology. All the main
features of Hume's psychology have been adopted by the whole
Associationist school in England, by Positivists abroad, and by
materialistic scientists in so far as they have any philosophy or
psychology at all. The essential distinction between intellect, or
rational activity, and sense has in fact been completely lost
sight of, and Scepticism and Agnosticism have logically followed.
Kant recognized a distinction between sensation and the higher
mental element, but, conceiving the latter in a different way from
the old Aristotelean view, and looking on it as purely subjective,
his system was developed into an idealism and scepticism differing
in kind from that of Hume, but not very much more satisfactory.
Still, the neo-Kantian and Hegelian movement, which developed in
Great Britain during the last quarter of the nineteenth century
has contributed much towards the reawakening of the recognition of
the intellectual, or rational, element in all knowledge.
THE COMMON DOCTRINE
The teaching of Aristotle on intellect, as developed by Albertus
Magnus and St. Thomas, has become, as we have said, in its main
features the common doctrine of Catholic philosophers. We shall
state it in brief outline.
(1) Intellect is a cognitive faculty essentially different from
sense and of a supra-organic order; that is, it is not exerted by,
or intrinsically dependent on, a bodily organ, as sensation is.
This proposition is proved by psychological analysis and study of
the chief functions of intellect. These are conception, judgment,
reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these
activities involve elements essentially different from sensuous
consciousness. In conception the mind forms universal ideas. These
are different in kind from sensations and sensuous images. These
latter are concrete and individual, truly representative of only
one object, whilst the universal idea will apply with equal truth
to any object of the class. The universal idea possesses a fixity
and invariableness of nature, whilst the sensuous image changes
from moment to moment. Thus the concept or universal idea of
"gold", or "triangle", will with equal justice stand for any
specimen, but the image represents truly only one individual. The
sensuous faculty can be awakened to activity only by a stimulus
which whatever it be, exists in a concrete, individualized form.
In judgment the mind perceives the identity or discordance of two
concepts. In reasoning it apprehends the logical nexus between
conclusion and premises. In reflection and self-consciousness it
turns back on itself in such a manner that there is perfect
identity between the knowing subject and the object known. But all
these forms of consciousness are incompatible with the notion of a
sensuous faculty, or one exerted by means of a bodily organ. The
Sensationist psychologists, from Berkeley onwards, were unanimous
in maintaining that the mind cannot form universal or abstract
ideas. This would be true were the intellect not a spiritual
faculty essentially distinct from sense. The simple fact is that
they invariably confounded the image of the imagination, which is
individualized, with the concept, or idea, of the intellect. When
we employ universal terms in any intelligible proposition the
terms have a meaning. The thought by which that meaning is
apprehended in the mind is a universal idea.
(2) In cognition we start from sensuous experience. The intellect
presupposes sensation and operates on the materials supplied by
the sensuous faculties. The beginning of consciousness with the
infant is in sensation. This is at first felt, most probably, in a
vague and indefinite form. But repetition of particular sensations
and experience of other sensations contrasted with them render
their apprehension more and more definite as time goes on. Groups
of sensations of different senses are aroused by particular
objects and become united by the force of contiguous association.
The awakening of any one of the group calls up the images of the
others. Sense perception is thus being perfected. At a certain
stage in the process of development the higher power of intellect
begins to be evoked into activity, at first feebly and dimly. In
the beginning the intellectual apprehension, like the sensations
which preceded, is extremely vague. Its first acts are probably
the cognition of objects revealed through sensation under wide and
indefinite ideas, such as "extended-thing", "moving-thing",
"pressing-thing", and the like. It takes in objects as wholes,
before discriminating their parts. Repetition and variation of
sense-impressions stimulates and sharpens attention. Pleasure or
pain evokes interest and the intellect concentrates on part of the
sensuous experience, and the process of abstraction begins.
Certain attributes are laid hold of, to the omission of others.
Comparison and discrimination are also called into action, and the
more accurate and perfect elaboration of concepts now proceeds
rapidly. The notions of substance and accidents, of whole and
parts, of permanent and changing, are evolved with increasing
distinctness. Generalization follows quickly upon abstraction.
When an attribute or an object has been singled out and recognized
as a thing distinct from its surroundings, an act of reflection
renders the mind aware of the object as capable of indefinite
realization and multiplication in other circumstances, and we have
now the formally reflex universal idea.
The further activity of the intellect is fundamentally the same in
kind, comparing, identifying, or discriminating. The activity of
ratiocination is merely reiteration of the judicial activity. The
final stage in the elaboration of a concept is reached when it is
embodied for further use in a general name. Words presuppose
intellectual ideas, but register them and render them permanent.
The intellect is also distinguished according to its functions, as
speculative or practical. When pronouncing simply on the rational
relations of ideas, it is called speculative; when considering
harmony with action, it is termed practical. The faculty, however,
is the same in both cases. The faculty of conscience is in fact
merely the practical intellect, or the intellect passing judgment
on the moral quality of actions. The intellect is essentially the
faculty of truth and falsity, and in its judicial acts it at the
same time affirms the union of subject and predicate and the
agreement between its own representation and the objective
reality. Intellect also exhibits itself in the higher form of
memory when there is conscious recognition of identity between the
present and the past. To the intellect is due also the conception
of self and personal identity. The fundamental difficulty with the
whole Sensationist school, from Hume to Mill, in regard to the
recognition of personality, is due to their ignoring the true
nature of the faculty of intellect. Were there no such higher
rational faculty in the mind, then the mind could never be known
as anything more than a series of mental states. It is the
intellect which enables the mind to apprehend itself as a unity,
or unitary being. The ideas of the infinite, of space, time, and
causality are all similarly the product of intellectual activity,
starting from the data presented by sense, and exercising a power
of intuition, abstraction, identification, and discrimination. It
is, accordingly, the absence of an adequate conception of
intellect which has rendered the treatment of all these mental
functions so defective. in the English psychology of the last
century.
(See also FACULTIES OF THE SOUL; DIALECTIC; EPISTEMOLOGY;
EMPIRICISM; IDEALISM; POSITIVISM.)
MICHAEL MAHER
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
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