Notes and References

* Wilfrid Sellars, M.A. (Oxford), is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, 1934-1937, taking First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, 1936. Author of articles on epistemological topics in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, the Journal of Philosophy, and Philosophy of Science. Co-editor with Herbert Feigl of Readings in Philosophical Analysis.

1 The phrase "formal materialism" frequently occurs in contemporary Thomist literature as an alternative to "hylomorphism," particularly when it is a question of wooing intellectuals whose quest for certainty has led them to flirt with "dialectical" materialism, or any other philosophy avowedly materialistic in character, and for whom this phrase might build a bridge to the eternal verities. See Mortimer Adler, What Man Has Made of Man (1938), pp. 167 ff. 180. For an elementary statement of Thomistic hylomorphism, see Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy (1930), pp. 166 ff.

2 I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Prof. C.D. Broad's discussion of dispositional properties and the concept of the nature of a thing in An Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (1933), Vol I. pp. 142-151, 264-278. See also chap. X of his The Mind and Its Place in Nature.

3 Note that the contrast between "state" and "circumstance" belongs to the thing-nature language. Causal laws conceived of as functional correlations of events are not formulated in terms of "states" and "circumstances." The relation the thing-nature or thing-property language to the event-law language is not the simple one of whole to part. Laws are formulated differently in these two frameworks. See also note 5 below.

4 It is especially significant to the historian of philosophy that the thing-nature framework, though historically prior to and more "natural" than the event-law framework which was to dominate science from the seventeenth century on, could be correctly analyzed only by a philosopher who has a clear conception of a law of nature, and that although many if not all laws can be formulated in both the event-law and the thing-nature framework, attention is explicitly focused on laws only in the process of research which must make use of event-law framework. The language of things and properties, states and circumstances, where it is appropriate, sums up what we know. But the scientist doesn't know what kinds of things there are until he has arrived at laws which can be translated into the thing language. Thus, the historian infers that one would hardly expect to find a correct analysis of the thing-nature framework until scientists were explicitly looking for causal laws. He also infers that, unless the thing-nature framework is essential to science, it would be discarded by the scientist in favor of the event-law framework, so that the motivation for such an analysis would be lacking at the very time it became possible. The history of philosophy bears out both these inferences. On the other hand, the historian would expect that, should it ever become either necessary or convenient to formulate certain areas of knowledge in the language of things and dispositions, philosophers of science would soon reexamine this framework.

5 Whether the elaboration of concepts within the thing-nature framework is anything more than a convenient common- sense dodge, whether it is, in the last analysis, self-consistent, and, indeed, whether this elaboration is possible with anything other than the crudest laws, are questions into which we shall not enter. For a discussion of these and other questions which together make up the philosophical problem of "substance," the reader is referred to Prof. Everett J. Nelson's essay in this volume.

6 Adler, op. cit., pp. 111, 190.

7 Leibniz was to realize that the necessity with which the states of things occur, given their natures and circumstances, is analytic or tautological, but, owing to a confusion about relations, was to think that a reference to circumstances could not be involved in the definition of the nature of a substance. More accurately, this confusion led him to conceive of the circumstances to which a substance responds by taking on a given state as other states of the same thing. For this to be plausible, he had to put environment of each thing inside the thing. The result was his famous doctrine that each monad or substance mirrors the entire universe.

8 "Essence and power are distinct, but the powers flow from essence." -- Adler, Problems for Thomists: The Problem of Species, p. 182.

9 Aristotle thought that historically the higher could not come from the lower, and believed that all natural kinds have existed from eternity, because he confused "coming from" with "reducible to." Contemporary Aristotelians who are aware of the distinction rightly see no incompatibility between "irreducible levels" and "evolution."

10 A.E. Taylor, in his Varia Socratica, has shown that by the time of Socrates the term "idea" (eidos, idea), which originally referred to the human form, had become a technical term for the ultimate ingredients which mix and unmix to form the world process. Thus Democritus referred to his atoms as Ideas. Compare the process by which the German word Gestalt has become a technical term in psychology, and, indeed, in philosophy.

11 The solution of the problem of universals consists exactly in showing that the following statements are all true: (1) "Universals exist." (2) "Thoughts mean universals." (3) "It is nonsense to speak of any psychological relationship between thought and universals." The solution involves first a making explicit of the ambiguities of the term "existence," and second a distinction between "meaning" as a term belonging to the framework of logical analysis and criticism, and "meaning" as a descriptive term in empirical psychology relating to habits of response to and manipulation of linguistic symbols. The classical conception of mind as apprehending universals and meaning is based on a confusion of the logical with the psychological frame of reference. To deny that universals "exist" when speaking in the framework of logical analysis (logical nominalism) is as mistaken as to assert that universals "exist" when speaking in the framework of the psychological description of thought (ontological realism or Platonism).

12 Recent logical analysis has made it clear that just as every thought involves a reference to at least one universal, so every thought -- even the most "abstract" - - involves a reference to at least one particular. Indeed, instead of abstract thoughts referring to no particulars, the exact opposite is the case, for they refer to all particulars. Thus, "All A is B" says of every item in the universe that if it is an A it is also a B. This line of thought cannot be explored on this occasion. It is sufficient to note that, if sound, it explodes the Platonic contention that universals are more appropriately the objects of thought than are particulars.

13 It is often said that the essential difference between Platonist and Aristotelian is that while both maintain the ontological reality of universals, the Aristotelian holds that they exist only in particulars, the Platonist giving them an existence apart. One should always be cautious about attributing nonsense to intelligent philosophers; and to say that universals are literally in (or apart from) particulars is nonsense. This interpretation of the difference between Platonist and Aristotelian rests on two mistakes. (1) It overlooks the fact that the "apartness" of the Platonic Ideas is, in large measure, their Olympian self-sufficiency. Plato teaching -- except in the Parmenides -- that the Ideas would exist even if the "world of becoming" did not. (2) It rests on the assumption that the Aristotelian clearly and unambiguously thinks of his forms as "objective" universals, for that the forms of changing things exist only as ingredients of these things for this philosophy is granted. The truth of the matter is that the Aristotelian has a strong bias against the ontological reality of universals, and tends to think of them as contents "abstracted" from sense and imagination, which contents become universals only in and for thought. The Aristotelian matter can scarcely be a principle of particularity which supplements universals (as it is for the Platonist); otherwise "pure forms" would be universals, which they clearly are not intended to be. Matter makes change possible, and in doing so is a principle of difference for objects having like nature; for objects of like nature can differ only in their histories. Matter is the principium individuationis rather than principium particularitatis. It must be admitted, however, that the Aristotelian has his Platonizing moments, especially when puzzled about the objectivity of knowledge. Notice that I have been speaking of the Aristotelian tradition rather than of Aristotle himself. A discussion of the extent to which the latter exhibits the characteristic ambivalence of the Aristotelian tradition with respect to the status of universals would take us far beyond the scope of this paper. Fortunately, the argument which follows does not depend on either interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of universals. For a penetrating account of Aristotle's difficulties with universals see H.F. Cherniss, Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy, Vol. I (1944), pp. 324-376. For the Thomist treatment of the problem see Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 160 ff.; Mortimer Adler, "Solution of the Problem of Species," Thomist, Apr., 1941, pp. 303 ff. See also Maritain, La Philosophie de la nature, p. 9.

14 De Anima, Bk. III, chaps. 7, 8. See W.D. Ross, Aristotle, 2nd ed., p. 148; Mortimer Adler, What Man Has Made of Man, pp. 162, 175; Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 170 ff.; R.E. Brennan, Thomistic Psychology (1942), p. 179 ff., 202. Cf. Brennan's discussion of imageless thought on p. 204, where in his eagerness to reconcile Aquinas with empirical fact, he contradicts not only the entire Aristotelian tradition, but what he has himself just finished saying.

15 Republic, VI, pp. 510-511.

16 The Doctrine of Recollection (Phaedo, pp. 72-77; Meno, pp. 80-86) might be thought, at a hasty glance, to be or entail such a position. Plato's point, however, is that the object of thought can neither be nor be derived from the object of the senses. He also assumes that the objects of thought cannot be directly grasped by an embodied soul (an assumption which Plato himself later abandoned, and with it the Doctrine of Recollection which falls without it). When the object of sense seems to be the object of thought it is because it is putting us in mind of the object of thought of which we must have an innate non-sensuous image or imprint). He argues that what reminds us of an idea need not be like the Idea. While he puts this forward in the Phaedo to reconcile recollection with the great difference between sense-objects and Ideas, it is clear that Plato does not intend to restrict the stimulus of recollection to sense- experience alone. Interrogation also can put us in mind of Ideas.

17 Ross, Aristotle, 2nd ed., pp. 136-142; Brennan, Thomistic Psychology, pp. 11-16, 117-123; Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge (1938), p. 143 n.

18 Note that the science of the geometrical properties of color patches will not be the same as the science of the geometrical of physical objects, unless the terms "triangular," "straight," "shape," etc., have the same sense in the context of physical objects as they do in the context of color patches. Now the important thing about the shapes of color patches is that they are directly given to consciousness, so that, if there is a mental activity of abstraction as conceived of by the Aristotelians, it will make sense to speak of grasping geometrical universals by abstraction from cases with which the mind is directly acquainted. furthermore, if the geometrical universals exemplified by physical objects can reasonably be identified with the geometrical universals exemplified by the boundaries of colors, then the science in question would be the science of the shapes, of physical objects as well as of the shapes of color patches. If we assume, in Aristotelian style, that the colors we see are in the observer's organism, then the science of physical shapes would rest on the exemplification in the knower's organism of geometrical universals. Compare the case of the science of lions in the next paragraph.

19 See, for example, Thomistic Psychology, pp. 178, 184, 189-193.

20 "We must . . . notice that dispositions fall into a hierarchy. A bit of iron which has been put inside a helix in which an electric current circulates acquires the power to attract iron-filings. . . . If we call this magnetic property a 'first-order disposition,' the power to acquire this property when placed in a helix . . . may be called a 'second-order disposition.' " (Broad, Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy, Vol. 1, p. 266.) See also the references listed in note 2 above.

21 Maritain, La Philosophie de la nature, pp. 42, 89-93; Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, p. 249; Brennan, op. cit., p. 170; Adler, "Solution of the Problem of Species," pp. 399 n., 347 n. Adler has apparently not got around to drawing the implications of his remarks in the latter reference. They contain enough dynamite to force a complete revision of his ontology, or epistemology. Is substantial form a category in the Kantian sense?

22 Adler, What Man Has Made of Man, p. 207; Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 77, 168, 216, and La Philosophie de la nature, pp. 100, 143.

23 Maritain, La Philosophie de la nature, pp. 75-80, and The Degrees of Knowledge, p. 249, also pp. 77, 168, 216.

24 Maritain, La Philosophie de la nature, pp. 75, 110, 140-143, and The Degrees of Knowledge, pp. 168, 216-217.

25 Mortimer Adler, What Man Has Made of Man, p. 187. On the value of pre-scientific experience for philosophy, see Adler's distinction between general and special experience, op. cit., pp. 11, 57, 129, 131; see also Maritain, La Philosophie de la nature, pp. 89-93. On the ability of the philosophy of nature to penetrate "behind" phenomena, see also Adler, op. cit., pp. 28, 160. But cf. the reference commented on in note 21 above.

26 The traditional mind-body problem is unnecessarily confused by a careless use of the term "interaction." Properly, this term belongs in the thing-language, and denotes a relation between things or substances. However, it is sometimes used by philosophers in such a way that it means only a causal entanglement of two series of events of fundamentally different kinds. The latter use analytically presupposes "qualitative" dualism, and if mental events are "irreducible" there is interaction in this sense. Usually at this stage the ordinary sense of interaction takes over and, presto chango, our philosopher has a dualism of interacting mental and physical things. Whether or not the thing-language is anything more than a common-sense dodge, it is important to note that qualitative dualism of events does not, by itself, entail dualism of things. This insight is characteristic of the Aristotelian tradition, as of modern emergentist theories.

27 De Anima, Bk. III, chap. 5; see also 413a 3-7, 413b24-29 and 429b3-4. The basis in what survives of Aristotle's works for a reconstruction of his distinction between active and passive reason is extremely tenuous, amounting to but a few sentences of explicit discussion. The interpretation which I offer is, I believe, not only compatible with what he does say, and with the analogies from other areas stressed by commentaries, but is a reasonable argument, given his premises. For an account of the evidence as well as of the main lines of interpretation see Ross, Aristotle, 2 nd ed., pp. 148-153, and E. E. Spicer, Aristotle's Conception of the Soul (1934), pp. 103-112.

28 "Abstraction, which is the proper task of the active intellect . . . " (Brennan, Thomistic Psychology, p. 191.) See Ross's comment on this type of mistake on p. 149 of his Aristotle.

29 Except potentially. If you kill an elephant, earth, air, fire, and water, which were present in the living elephant only as physical properties, come into existence as substances. I shall not comment on this theory as it would take us too far into the analysis of substantiality, and would be irrelevant to the specific confusions involved in the argument for immortality, See Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, p. 219n.

30 See Adler What Man Has Made of Man, p. 190.

31 In so far as the Scholastics attributed to active reason the function of abstracting the universal from its sensuous embodiment, a dispositional property is involved which is essentially bound up with organic existence. This property and hence the act of abstraction, is therefore more properly attributed to the men than to the intellectus agens. The latter should be restricted to the timeless knowing of all natures.