Aquinas And Descartes View Of Knowledge

Knowledge

Aquinas and Descartes have different ideas on how humans gain knowledge in the world. Both philosophers need to define what the human body is composed of in order to determine how we gain knowledge.

For Aquinas intellect comes from the soul and the body working in unison. The soul is the substantial form of a living material thing. It is the actuality of a living material substance. Even though the rational soul is what differentiates humans from other living things, it does not make us human beings. Aquinas writes that "we could maintain this if we were to suppose that the activities of sensory souls are proper to such souls apart from bodies." (Aquinas 62) Aquinas is saying that we would be able to say that the human soul is the human being, if our souls were able to sense without using our bodies. The soul and body together allow us to sense, learn (through our senses), and feel emotions. The previous theory of learning comes from Meno. Socrates says that we learn by recollection. Aquinas does not agree with this theory. Aquinas says that we can only learn through the rational soul, what our bodies have come in contact with. "And so the human intellect understands material things by abstracting from sense images and comes by means of material things so considered to some knowledge of immaterial things." (Aquinas 87)

The problem that arises is how we come up with universal definitions with sensing only particular cases. Aquinas says that we learn through abstraction. Through abstraction, we first take in all information through all our senses. Then we put together all the information gathers through senses into one image of an object subconsciously. Now we have an image in our minds which is called a phantasm. Afterwards we collect and recall all phantasms. Finally we abstract the non-essential differences from the various phantasms and create a universal definition. Aquinas does not mention God when it comes to our process of abstraction. According to Aquinas, God created our bodies with rational souls. "And so only the primary efficient cause, God, can cause without the existence of something being presupposed." (Aquinas 103) Other than that Aquinas does not mention God's intervention into our gaining of knowledge.

Descartes has a very different way of explaining the way we gain our knowledge. At first Descartes compares his beliefs to a house. Some basic beliefs are our foundation. These are our unquestioned beliefs that are our senses tell us are true. We build on those foundational beliefs. If we have a weak foundation, where we doubt our beliefs or if they are false, then our house of knowledge collapses. Descartes begins by testing his senses. He uses the example of a piece of wax. At first it has a honey flavor, and it has the scent of flowers. It is hard and cold and easy to touch. But when you put the piece of wax over a flame it changes. Everything we first sensed about the wax has change but we still recognize that it is wax. "For whatever came under the senses of taste, smell, sight, touch, or hearing has now changed; and yet wax remains." (Descartes 67) This shows that we do not gain knowledge from our senses.

He gives many other examples of how are senses can be misleading, for example insane people, dreaming, people with fevers, or people on drugs. However in all these situations, we can still believe in some basic truths. Even in our dreams two plus two equals four. Descartes goes to the extreme and says that we may even be trapped by an evil demon who is giving us fall senses. So the only thing that we can be completely sure of is that we think. "At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is, a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason." (Descartes 65) Even though there may be someone controlling our thoughts, we doubt. We are having thoughts even though they may be false. "For it is so obvious that it is I who doubt, I who understand, and I who will, that there is nothing by which it could be explained more clearly." (Descartes 66)

Descartes then goes on to explain objective reality versus formal reality. Objective reality is the reality of ideas or thoughts, while formal reality is the cause of our ideas or thoughts. For example I see desk in our classroom. There could be a powerful being giving us the idea of desks, senses actually taking in desks, or I expect desks to be there so I create the idea of desks. When Descartes considers the example of God, he uses the same experiment to explain how we come to the idea of God or an all powerful being. I am not perfect, and I have never sensed or experienced perfection. Can the all powerful demon be giving me this image of perfection? No, because to