The "Problem" of Universals Applied to Standards

The “problem of universals” has presented itself to philosophers as one of the most basic metaphysical puzzles since the time of the ancient Greeks,so it's no surprise I'm taking an interest in it after a few semesters at UD. A universal is fundamentally distinguished from the individual, or “particular,” objects that we encounter in day-to-day living in the sense that it refers to the core similarity between diverse objects. For instance, in the sentence “This round-ish, red-colored fruit is an apple,” “this round-ish red-colored fruit” signifies a particular because it refers to an individual being, whereas “apple” is a universal because it refers to some category of appleness of which all individual apples are part. The “problem” with universals is the question of whether they exist at all, of whether they are real or merely constructs of the human mind. The nature of our answer to such a query is of vital importance: it does not simply determine our view on universals themselves, but has a much broader significance for our understanding of how we should approach the world. One substantial ramification of our answer is the effect it will have on our understanding of whether or not we can apply standards to the beings in our experience.

Among the reasons we may wish to preserve a coherent system of standards in our world-view is that in so doing we retain the necessary rational tool for making judgments about the beings and situations that we encounter over the course of our lives. When capable of applying standards to the objects of our experience we are empowered to make rational decisions about those objects depending on what our standards are and how those objects live up to them. For instance, if we have a standard that sets out certain criteria for what makes a thing an apple, we can use this standard in evaluating specific objects to determine which one is the apple and will therefore be tasty to eat. Without such criteria, there is no way of determining what a thing is, at least not in terms of what practical repercussions its essence can have on you. A natural corollary to this ability to define something is, from an Aristotelian viewpoint, the ability to determine whether it is good as what it is. Thus is you know what an apple is, and you know that a specific object is an apple, you also know that if that particular apple happens to be rotten, it is not good; it is not fulfilling its being as an apple to the fullest potential.

From the preceding discussion it is clear that if we want to preserve the reality of standards, it is necessary to reject the view that universals are non-existent. By the extreme nominalist (universal-rejecting) position, only words can be general. There is, however, no underlying reality that these words are signifying. That is, we may call a variety of objects “apples”, but in doing so we are not expressing any fundamental unity of essence but only denoting certain accidental similarities between everything that we categorize under that term. Such a position necessarily excludes the notion of real, objective criteria against which a particular being can be weighed. We can, true enough, apply general terms to specific objects by the nominalist theory, but such application does not constitute a real judgment of those objects if it is not in reference to something real. Perhaps phrased as the nominalists have it, exclusion of the universal from the ontological chart may seem harmless enough when it comes to our standing example of the apple. If we can at least recognize that all things we call apples will share the attributes of tastiness and not be poisonous, we will feel safe enough eating one whether its “appleness” is real or merely a verbal construct. However, when we turn our consideration towards less concrete matters it becomes apparent that there are many universals—truth, goodness, and beauty in particular—which seem crucial to a complete understanding of the world in which we live. Yet these have no specific concrete expression such that considering them solely as accidental properties will serve our apparently innate desire to take them as standards to guide our approach to being. In this vein we should also consider that though we can accept the apple as edible from a nominalist point of view, there is no logical way for us to evaluate its goodness. It shares the accidents of all other particulars to which we apply the general term, but it cannot be judged a good apple unless there is a standard of appleness by which we can analyze it.

Thus it is clear that if we find the ability to judge objects of our encounter both valuable and necessary based on the nature of our experience of the world, we must think of universals as realities. There is a myriad of ways in which to formulate our conception of universals, but I will focus only on Aristotle’s, which is notably opposed to the platonic idea that universals have some separate, vague existence as un-instantiated forms. Drawing apprehension from his foundation, we receive a picture of universals as “ways of being”: realities which exist but not independently of and separate from particular beings. That is, they are real only insofar as they are instantiated in individual, actual beings. Individual apples, then, are united by virtue of an appleness that exists in and through them.

This way of understanding universals has a compelling consequence when considered in light of the determination to preserve the rational concept of standards. If it is a valid move to consider universals as containing criteria by which we can assess an individual being, there must be some perfection of that being which the universal implies and comprehends. And if the universal exists only insofar as it does in actual beings, there must be some being in which each one exists—either substantially or in the soul through knowledge, as Aquinas, building on Aristotle, puts it—perfectly. Though this idea deserves to be more fully developed than I have space to do in this essay, it suggests another compelling reason for belief in God. According to Christian thought, God Himself is that Being in which all created things have their being. Thus, the apple would exist in God perfectly in his comprehension of it, whereas the pervasive characteristics of being—truth, beauty, and goodness—exist as modalities of Himself as He interacts with our world.

And now for some spiritual enightenment....

Here's a choice selection from our local retreat center; thought y'all might be interested.

Dowsing as a Tool for Self Knowledge and Decision Making

Many people are familiar with the ancient form of dowsing for water by using a Y-shaped hazel tree branch. Dowsing is enjoying resurgence in alternative medicine fields as a simple, powerful, and fun way to make decisions regarding your health, spirit, and emotions, for example. Anyone can dowse as long as they keep an open mind; appreciate listening to their inner spirit, and practice. We'll learn to dowse using L-rods, pendulums and everyday household items, and we'll learn how to use dowsing to aid in the decisions you make every day. You'll be amazed by how clear your answers become as you begin to learn and trust the ancient and fun art of dowsing.

You know, you just have to keep your mind wide enough open so that it can fall out somewhere near the beginning. Preferably around where they start talking about the water in the ground mirroring your chi patterns. It's when you get into how the energy of manifestation from the matrix of life follows an intuitive guidance along a path that seems to be new yet feels old, etc. that things really start getting interesting!

Labyrinth Day

On the first day of the last month of 2009, come and walk the indoor labyrinth. Where are the endings and beginnings in your life? Settle your heart, mind, and spirit for the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The labyrinth will be set up in the southwest room for your journey. Information about the labyrinth and reflective questions will be available for your use. Arrive and depart at your own pace.

If you get really lost, maybe they'll come find you if you yell long enough.

The Sacred Art of Healing Through Laughter: Become a Clown!

Allow your "inner child" some play time. Give yourself a new name and create a character that speaks to your inner dreams or outer fancies. Clowning can be amusing, transforming, and healing too. The basics of balloon sculpturing and a bit of magic will be included for fun.

Inner dreams? Outer fantasies???? Do we want to know?

Earth Stations

Join us as we journey in prayer with pictures, poetry, chants, and wisdom from many cultures to bring us into the spirit of solemn reflection on behalf of a wounded earth. Outdoors 3-4:30 pm unless it is raining (dress warmly), and indoors in the chapel 6-7:30 pm. Bring a drum, rainstick, or sound maker if you want. Walk the Earth Stations on your own anytime this week (call ahead to arrange). FREE.

But... donations to PETA are accepted. Oh yeah, and it's a good idea to have your costume incorporate a lot of bandaids, ankle wraps, and fake limb casts just to make the "wounded earth" motif extra clear.

Picturing Prayer

"Pray always," we have been told. This weekend retreat is an invitation to "Pray all ways." The movement will be gentle. From moments of tranquility born of centering prayer, we will 'pray' the Presence of God as captured through the eyes of a digital camera. The rhythm will be from inner stillness to outer awareness and back to our Center. Participants should come equipped with a digital camera. If you have no camera, come with a sketch pad and pencil in order to 'picture your prayer.' Come. Pray always. Pray all ways.

Capture your inner stillness on film using our new x-ray equipment. Or go old school with the "down-the-throat" camera. Outer awareness is well portrayed through keeping the eyes wide and mouth slightly open, hands hanging loosely at your sides. Come yourself to learn the gnosis of photographing your incorporeal Center from our tranquilizing guru!

Let the battle begin!

I know, I know. Given the current maelstrom of public policy coverups, attempts to socialize our health care, and other random bad news from the political realm of the good old USA, you might be expecting the title to be serious. You never know - I have been known to branch off into politics before if the situation was aggravating enough (as it jolly well is now). But that's not my concern at the moment. (And before I begin arguing against the proposed national health care, I want my facts sorted rather more neatly than they are now.)

When I say battle, I mean, all-out paintball war!!! Who'd've thunk it? Ostensibly quiet, reserved me turning into a paintballing maniac. Well, I'll admit that there is a good handful out there in the world who might have suspected. But, hey, this was totally sweet! A family in northern Illinois invited all 20 something of us counselors and teachers a few weekends ago to their house for a couple of days just so that we could enjoy their epic-awesome paintballing paraphernalia. They're actually a family that I already knew slightly from UD - one of the classic dynasty families with a sibling graduating nearly every year for about ten years. Pretty awesome.

They have a house near a largeish pond, and for the paintballing, after we got all geared up, the dad and one of the daughters (a recent UD grad!) took us out to a thickly overgrown island just off shore. The actual wars lasted only about 20 minutes each, but we had 4 or 5 of them in one afternoon, and given the strenuousness of even moving a couple of feet while staying undercover, that was plenty. Just to brag a little bit, I have to say that I was pretty amazing at sneaking. I would come up about a foot away from on of the other team's snipers and then they would have to fall back out of position as I hooked around and snuck up further.

It's acutally not quite as great as it might sound, because when you get that close, you can't fire at all...so it wasn't completely effective. Add to that the fact that I used less than a quarter cannister of ammunition per game in my enthusiasm for thriftiness. Ah well. C'est la vie. It was jolly fun overall.

A random thought

So, how would it be if I were to take it into my head to change the design of this page? I would have to think about a new one. I would have to go through the dreadful html headache to tweak the boring template blogspot offers. I would have to spend precious time doing it. But it might look more interesting. Then again, I don't mind it now. The whole black-and-white theme is rather dear to me. As is the darling sepia picture of Professor Tolkein in his armchair.

Any thoughts?

The Forgotten Inkling

What a dramatic opener, no? Charles Williams, the forgotten member of the literary group that so many fans of 20th century literature know and love, friend of J.R.R. Tolkein, Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, to name a few.

So who is he, and what does he write about? Intrigued by this question and by the relative lack of any information about this fellow, I've been remaining keenly alert to any copies of his works that I find lurking in hidden corners of used bookstores (often his books are drastically overpriced - in my opinion - online) and I know have a respectable collection of his novels. These are often described, by the few critics who address them at all, as "spiritual thrillers". I'm not quite sure what to make of such a description, which seems to me to be unhelpfully vague. There's certainly a rather chilling aspect to those I've read, and they all treat things that our culture tends to consider fantastic - such as souls, ghosts, life after death, etc - as having a very real and substantial effect on the ins and outs of material existence. (I look forward to giving some thought eventually to William's philosophical compatability with Gilbert Ryle, but that will take a few more reads, I think.)

There's a definite power to his writing, which really draws you up into the story, but my one concern with the books - particularly Descent Into Hell (a book very sound in its moral philosophy, but perhaps just a tad questionable in its metaphysics) - is that their plots are dreadfully confusing. I closed Descent Into Hell with a clear idea of what it was trying to say and of the basic arc of moral development among the characters, but without a firm grasp of how or when anything happened.

I exaggerate. I did understand a lot of it, but there were some portions that seemed to get so wrapped up in mysticism that the logic of the plot is defied. Maybe this is an effect he's trying to acheive. I wouldn't doubt it, given his purpose in writing. My judgment as to its literary merit, however, I think will have to wait to give me a chance to do some second readings.

Chicago

So to elaborate on the esoteric reference in yesterday's post, I will give a brief explanation of where I currently am and why.

Location: Chicago, Illinois
Mission: To help mentor and tutor inner-city kids in basic academics and to encourage character formation: good habits, acquisition of good goals and virtues, etc. I'm doing it through a program associated with Opus Dei.

However, I won't discuss that much because it's work and people's privacy is involved and all that. Rather I'll focus my attention on jotting down some impressions of the "Windy City" (which actually is very windy just now, though the city was nicknamed that not in reference to gusty weather conditions, but to loquacious politicians). Not that I'll be writing a lot. As usual, the vast majority of my time will probably be occupied, partly by the program, partly by the fun evening activities we counselors will be doing as a group.

I must say, it strikes me as a very nice city. Other than Boston, I haven't had much contact with American cities, and this is nothing at all like Boston or anything I encountered in Europe. It has a pronounced skyscraper skyline, a forest of surprisingly aesthetically pleasing buildings towering hundreds of feet above you. It's a clean city, especially compared to Rome which, like most Italian cities, has the less-charming side of being rather filthy. And like Syracuse, NY, my mom's childhood homebase, it has a multitude of small ethnic neighborhoods with lots of good ethnic food and families who have lived in the same area since their grandparents got off the boat.

This night we went to get Italian ice (something unknown in Italy, as far as I remember) in the Italian quarter. The place was this tiny family-owned shop tucked at the corner of a row of rather nice apartment buildings. "Mario's" it's called, and the real Mario himself came out and regaled us with a long story about how his dad started him in the business - making lemonade and selling it for 5 cents a cup on the sidewalk - when he was six because he was too hyperactive in school. He proudly told us of his refusal to use computers, palm pilots, calculators, or anything remotely technological (he keeps his accounts on a cardboard box because it doesn't get lost like small scraps of paper do), and his even more vigorous refusal to make it into a franchise, despite his kids' solicitations. What made the tales he spun especially entertaining was the classic Italian American accent he told them all in - all in all, it seemed like he could have stepped right out of the movies (some of which - he said - were supposed to include his stand, but whose directors were firmly turned down when they wouldn't let his own workers stand in as the Italian ice sellers in the movie).

More JPo?

Huzzah! I'm quite excited and have good reason to be. I'm here in Chicago (long story, may be told later, if I feel like it) and was just talking to another English major from the University of Dallas. She's graduated, went on to graduate school at Christendom, and now has a masters from that school, I believe.

Anyway, I decided to ask her advice about taking six classes during the Junior poet semester. Would it be at all feasible, I wondered? A teacher and several (non-jpo taking) students had strongly discouraged it when I first signed up, so I had been second-guessing myself for a little while. But this most marvelous UD-er assured me that it might be tough, but it was definitely possible. And worth doing, too, since (and this was my reason for taking all six in the first place) they're really awesome classes which are either required for my major or won't be offered again during my time at school.

So here's the tentative list for next semester, the first one that I'm really excited about since I'm finally getting out of core classes (which are great but rather too easy) and moving on to some upper-level high interest stuff.

• Literary Study I (i.e. Junior poet)


• Medieval Literature


• Elementary Russian I


• Russian Novel


• Irish History


• French Literary Traditions II

Junior Poet and the (crazy?) upcoming semester

So this fall I'm going to be starting the famous Junior poet project that all UD English majors must complete before moving on in their academic careers... well, I mean, they could always scurry off to some ignominious alternative if the prospect of delving into the life and works of a single major English-language poet is too daunting. We leave them that choice. Yet no self-respecting English major would do that, not even one so intimidated by poetry as I.

Yes, I hate to break it to a scandalized world, but for all my obsession with the great classics of every age, I am not a fan of poetry. As a kid I hated the lack of storyline, and even more, despised the blatant emotionalism that characterized so much of it. I'm thinking Tennyson of Byron here, really, or maybe one of those typical English didactic poets who addressed poor Victorian children about the virtues of the ancient Romans. That these characterizations are a gross over-simplification I am well aware, but my childhood experience mars my enjoyment of fine verse nonetheless.

Yet I am slowly beginning to shed this prejudice, which means that there's some hope for me in the upcoming semester. I trace the first loosening of my unflinching disdain to my sophmore year in high school when I really read and listened to "The Raven" for the first time. Yes, it's an emotional poem, but the pulsing urgency of the rhythm captivated me, appealing as it did to my fascination with the sound and cadence of language.

Literary Traditions II at UD was another important step. I had a quite brilliant English teacher for this class, whose common-sense approach to poetry helped to weaken my vague idea that most poetry people were hopelessly head-in-the-clouds types who believed - in classic Rousseauian fashion - that the words of the poet came straight from the mouth of the divine forces of nature. And we covered a remarkable variety of verse, so with my exposure to the form somewhat increased, I began again to be delighted by the variety of styles, tones, rhythms, and so forth.

But for this class I return to the one poet I really have liked through all this time: T.S. Eliot. Some dislike what is seen as a tendency in his poetry to put all human experience under a microscope to examine the most common human emotions scientifically. He does have a penchant for intellectualization, but it is not so much an emotionless intellectualization as one that rebels against the simple conventions of poetic expression: why does the subject of poetry always have to be love, for instance, and why always the same two or three well-worn metaphors, once fresh, but now seldom more than lazy imitations of the brilliant poets of the past? And why must poetry idealize emotion for its own sake, as Rousseau and his ilk would have it?

There is a certain pessimism and cynicalness in his pre-conversion poetry, it's true. He's disillusioned with the world, caught up in a vortex of questions about the impact of temporality on human life, on the effect of language on human knowledge, on the apparent meaninglessness of modern life. These are concerns he retains after his conversion, but they are approached in a different way once he turns to Anglican Christianity to find a solution. There is still a sense of dissatisfaction with the world, but it is a dissatisfaction that points to a solution, often only subtly. There's no longer a feel of emptiness in the poems, as you end with after reading The Wasteland and his repetitive, slightly ominous, yet almost forlorn invocation of the thunder at the very end.

Anyway, those are just some preliminary ramblings on the fellow's work, based on my as yet quite superficial readings of his works. Plenty more musings will likely follow, because I think I'll probably have the subject on my mind more than once in the coming six months.

Aristotle on the soul

One of the nicest things about Aristotle is the way he takes time to explain the definitions of the words and concepts with which he deals very clearly and to carefully clarify the relationship between the various terms of the definitions. I have to go over his definitions of soul for my Philosophy of Man final, so I figured I'd try to schematize and post them, for want of anything better to say.

The first full definition of soul that Aristotle gives in De Anima II,1 calls it “a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within it”. Aristotle here understands substance in the second sense that he presents, as the actuality of a body, or as basically identical with form. The form is “that precisely in virtue of which a thing is called a this” - it gives a body its identity as what it is, actualizing its matter, which at the most basic level is purely potential. The soul is the actuality of a body having life potentially within it in the sense of the “first grade of actuality”: that is to say, it is the principle which organizes the matter in such a way that a certain activity is proper to it. Aristotle is thus presenting a distinction between two types of actuality: whereas the second, most complete, level of actuality involves the active exercise of the function proper to a body's essence, first actuality simply involves possession of and readiness to use this function. It makes sense that the soul would be the first actuality rather than second, because Aristotle would by no means want to say that simply because a person were, for instance, not actively thinking, he would somehow not have a form at that point – a sleeping person has just as much of a soul as a waking one; the person who is awake is merely pushing the first actuality of possession of knowledge in his soul into second actuality by thinking it.

Aristotle follows up this definition with a second one that ties in a few more elements of his understanding of the soul. It is, he says, “a substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence”. It is the “essential whatness” of a body which has life potentially within it. This formulation emphasizes the relation of actuality to essence: the characteristic act of a body makes that body what it is, just as the activity of cutting wood makes an ax an ax. Whatever function is proper and essential to an object's way of being is its actuality and thus its essence.

Update

Sorry once again that things have sort of ground to a halt out here in cyberspace. We've had several major trips: in particular our ten day long spring break and an even more recent excursion to Venice, Florence and Assisi, so I'm both recouping from those and cooperating with my professors' need to catch up on all the work we haven't done so far. To boot, I'm sick. Not much, but there's an important history paper due in two days and to my chagrin I've only written three well-edited paragraphs of the thing.

Anyway, more later on all the brilliant things that happened, and on a few of the not so brilliant misadventures of spring break. For now, I return immediately to study in hopes that it will finally be effective despite a general fogginess currently pervading my brain. (This last sentence could possibly be offensive to Gilbert Ryle, the under-publicized but incredibly perceptive 20th century philosophy whose work we're now studying in philosophy.)

Ireland

We're here in Ireland and having a marvelous time. The center here has computers, so I'm writing from one of those. We spent almost all yesterday wandering around Dublin and seeing some of the more well known sites, such as the James Joyce and Molly Malone statues, the Oscar Wilde House, the now-protestant Christ Church (built in 1038) and St. Patricks (built around 1100), Dublin castle, St. Stephen's Green, O'Connell St., and a few other things. The city is absolutely charming, especially compared to the sketchiness of Rome - very clean (street cleaners everywhere), quite colorful, and filled with lovely brick architecture and brightly painted doors. We ate at a bakery for lunch, where they made us sandwiches and tea (at long last, tea again!), and everyone was very friendly.

At the center where we're staying (perhaps a half-hour bus ride outside of Dublin), everyone is also extraordinarily friendly, as is usual in such places, and even more talkative. Mary's friend, Noreen, came all the way across the island from Galway to welcome us for the day, and we talked to her about the various sites and history of the places we were considering a visit too. This house here is gigantic: it rooms about 70 people in various corners.It's ancient and cracked in places, but the chapel is lovely and made with lots of green marble, the breakfasts (which Meg, Chelsea, and I helped prepare this morning) are delicious, and as I've said already, the friendliness is like nothing I've seen before.

The general plan for today was to catch a bus down to Glendalough to see the ancient monasteries there, but as it turned out, we got back to Dublin too late to catch the latest bus. So instead we went to Enniskerry, a tiny town rather near Glendalough and the Wicklow mountains, and headed for the famous Powerscourt Waterfall there. The guy at the bus stop in Dublin said it was a bit of a walk from the stop in Enniskerry to the waterfall. It ended up being about 5 miles out, so we walked all told, well over 10 miles total today. It was a lovely walk through some very green sheep country, and despite the fact that the road was exceedingly narrow and had no shoulder, we finished the journey in no more than six pieces.

The day ended uneventfully in a pub, where two of us ate some very delicious Irish lamb stew with Guinness bread, and others had either chowder or lamb-and-vegetable pie.

The Church of St. Nicholas at Bari

The iconography at this church was occasionally rather unusual. One example is this sculpture of two oxen on either side of the church's main door as if they were dragging the church along behind them, just as two real oxen had transported St. Nicholas' relics to Bari in the first place.

The Problem with Learning

At several points throughout the Platonic dialogues, the “learners paradox,” also known as “Meno's paradox,” is raised as the foremost problem any epistemological investigation must face. “How,” it queries, is learning possible if one does not know to begin with what one must learn?” (Meno, 80d). Whatever solutions have been offered since Plato's time, and whatever their merits, the paradox remains in the background of any discussion of how we acquire knowledge. Indeed, one might even say that the paradox does not merely present a problem in its own right, but rather in its own way expresses the most fundamental problem that all investigation of this sort faces: how is it possible for us to come to know the world in the face of the chasm that exists between our sensory experience and our knowledge? According to the paradox, we do not know reality, yet somehow seem to be capable of coming to know it; how can our sensory experience be any help at all to us in this endeavor if we do not already know what we seek? Unlike later philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, do not try to solve this problem by denying our ability to come to know reality: rather, they affirm despite all odds that there is a reality which exists independently of us which we can somehow come to know. Thus, if the learner's paradox really is as fundamental and problematic as it seems, judgment of either philosopher's epistemology will at some point find it necessary to examine how well they provide an answer to this puzzle.

The model for acquisition of knowledge implicit in Plato's Phaedo is in certain respects remarkably similar to Aristotle's. The discussion midway through the dialogue of the “Theory of Recollection” assumes, just as Aristotle does, that knowledge of the reality of things is reached through sensory experience of particulars through which one is able to abstract universal truths. “Surely,” Socrates remarks, “this conception of ours derives from seeing or touching or some other sense perception, and cannot come into our mind in any other way” (Phaedo, 75a). Likewise Aristotle observes that men “by nature desire to know” and thus take “delight. . .in [their] senses” which allow them to acquire knowledge (Metaphysics, I,1).

Beyond this core similarity, however, there are many obvious discrepancies between the arguments, most notably the language of recollection present in Plato but absent in Aristotle. For Socrates, it is important that his epistemology retain this language, at least in the Phaedo, because his argument is in the first place trying to prove the immortality of the soul. Thus one central motivation for using this language turns out to be incidental to Plato's actual view of the soul's learning process. But there nonetheless must be more compelling reasons to preserve this manner of speaking, as it is a common thread of multiple dialogues (Phaedo, Meno, and Phaedrus, for example), becoming, at least apparently, characteristic of Plato's philosophy. This more compelling reason is his need to answer the learner's paradox. According to a literal reading of the texts, Plato's solution to this conundrum is to deny that there is anything at all that we do not know. “There is nothing” Socrates claims, “that [the soul] has not learned”; all knowledge is present in the soul by virtue of its long experience and many reincarnations (Meno, 81c). Our seeming ignorance on earth is merely the result of our immortal soul's descent into a body, a material object which so muddles and confuses it that it forgets all its certain knowledge at birth. The solution to the paradox is in essence then, a claim that we both know and do not know everything we will experience. As a soul alone we know the forms of all things, but as a human being, we must struggle through possibly misleading sensory experience to “recall” that which we have now forgotten.

This solution is unthinkable for Aristotle. His hylomorphic view of the human person is central in his philosophy, and the belief that the soul is the form of the body makes recollection from a pre-corporeal existence is impossible. At a time when there was no body, there could have been no soul existing separately and possessing knowledge in its own right as a substance independent of the body. However, if Aristotle must reject Plato's solution, his theory of learning is faced afresh with the problem of the paradox. Nonetheless, we have examined Plato's solution only in a literal sense thus far. As it will turn out, there is a way of interpreting Plato's epistemology which brings it even closer to Aristotle's, and this reconciliation may perhaps prove useful in directing our approach to determining whether Aristotle's philosophy can present a viable solution to the learner's paradox.

Plato's literal solution relies exclusively upon the language of recollection, yet evidence from Phaedrus points to another possible interpretation of how we can understand recollection to begin with. Though he uses the image of a person remembering what he has known in a pre-corporeal state in both Meno and Phaedo to clarify his point, in Phaedrus Plato presents the object of “recollection” as “the Idea, a unity gathered together by reason” (Phaedrus, 249c). In other words, recollection perhaps is not so much remembering as the ability to recognize a thing according to its place in the universal sum of knowledge by means of the logical apparatus and capacity to recognize truth which are in man by nature. Phrased this way, in admittedly non-Platonic language, the position reveals its similarity to Aristotle's. Aristotle understands the mind as the sum of all knowledge, a concept remarkably similar to Plato's “unity gathered together by reason”. He even goes so far as to call it “the place of forms”, the forms being both for him and for Plato, the truly knowable aspect of a being (De Anima, III,4). The mind is, moreover, the single aspect of the soul which lives on after death, a point which recalls Plato's assertion that the soul, the proper knower of all things, is immortal (De Anima, II,2). Thus the two philosophers agree that the soul is the true location of all knowledge and that the soul understood in this sense is immortal: Aristotle's epistemology does not differ from Plato's in these respects, at least. Though this has taken us a long way towards reconciling the two epistemologies however, it turns out that it does not really solve our initial problem. In order to effect this reconciliation, I had to employ essentially Aristotelean language to explain Plato's position. Only when the language of potentiality and actuality is introduced and applied to this statement does it begin to sound like the full solution Aristotle's ideas can lead us to.

Aristotle's introduction to Western thought of the distinction between actuality and potentiality is the single major difference between the two philosophers that I will address here. Meno's paradox presupposes that we can be in only two states with respect to our knowledge of a given thing: one of positive knowledge or one of complete ignorance and unfamiliarity. Plato points towards Aristotle's solution by presenting a sort of “third manner” of knowing: knowing perfectly in the soul while the human person as a whole knows imperfectly but can recollect the knowledge of the soul given sufficient help. Applied to the learner's paradox, Aristotle's theory of knowledge takes the idea of a “third way” even further. All human beings, he says, are fully capable of knowing all truth. That is, we by nature are innately receptive of truth: we have the intrinsic ability to receive truth when presented with it, even if not previously knowing it in action. Actual knowledge may be absent, but it is absent in such a way that when presented with it, we are able to tell what it is and where it belongs. This is a round about way of expressing the idea that all knowledge of truth “is present”—though such language is inadequate to express the nature of potentiality—potentially in our souls. Acquisition of knowledge is simply actualization of this potential.

Thus, we see that Plato can be read as pointing towards a theory of knowledge that Aristotle later develops by introducing the distinction between actuality and potentiality. Though we cannot accept Plato's original model of the soul as a separate, all-knowing entity whose knowledge we remember over the course of a muddled lifetime if, like Aristotle, we want to preserve the idea that the soul is the form of the body, the alternate interpretation of Plato hints at Aristotle's resolution of this difficulty by altering our understanding of what recollection consists of. Knowledge is in some sense “in” the mind for Aristotle as well as for Plato. The literal answer to the learner's paradox—that we know all things anyway because our soul has already encountered them—must be discarded in light of the Aristotelean understanding of the human person. However, in establishing the language of potentiality and actuality, Aristotle in turn can provide a resolution to the problem of how to gain knowledge by expressing our potential to receive knowledge as our means of “knowing” what we don't know, and therefore as the grounds for its eventual drawing out and actualization.

Greece

Greece was marvelous. This is the verdict that will unabashedly color the rest of my accounts of the ten day trip our class took to the area of the Gulf of Corinth.

We took two buses down the Italian peninsula to the coastal city of Bari, where we made a brief stop at the church of St. Nicholas, which contains his relics and a Russian Orthodox chapel donated to that Church by John Paul II. Not much later, we were on a gigantic ferry heading over to the Greek port of Patras.

As it happened, we hit the stormiest weather on the way that any UD class has seen within the memory of the current faculty. This made the ride very amusing and interesting - for the about 10% of the group who didn't get violently ill. I spent lots of time out on deck, a little inside reading, and felt fine. There were two enormous water spouts that passed within a mile of the ship, and that was pretty entertaining to see. It's also very amusing to stand out on deck and let yourself fall forward into the wind: generally, it's strong enough to entirely support you.

We stayed overnight onboard and didn't land until 2:30 p.m. because of some delays due to the storm. More bus rides followed until we finally made it to Olympia, ancient site of (you'll never guess...) the Olympic games. The hotel was nice, the food was good (probably the most Greek that we'd get over the course of the trip).

Our next day was devoted to exploring the museum and archaeological site just on the outskirts of the rather shabby and obviously not wealthy town. Olympia had been a major pilgrimage site in ancient Greece, and its Temple to Zeus was one of the largest in the ancient world. There would have been bath complexes, multiple temples, treasuries, etc. - the games had a religious origin, and preserved this connotation far into the later years of ancient history. In early Christian times, the site was combined with a Christian shrine, and remained something of a pilgrimage site until an earthquake leveled everything in the time of the late Roman empire. The stadium is still extant, and the best part of the trip was when we got to race three times there: one men's race, one women's and one mixed relay.

The prettiness of the area completely validated our decision to come in the spring. There were daisies, bright red wild poppies, and some type of unfamiliar purple flower all through the ruins. Also, I ought to observe that olive trees are remarkably pretty and are everywhere.

Cucumber Melon

I always get a kick out of the general tenor of people's reactions when I touch on anything we study here at UD. Ancient literary classics, Euclid, Aristotle, Church Fathers. . .'how boring!' Well, not really. It doesn't take an excessive amount of natural astuteness, really not even a grand degree of nerdiness, to begin to find these texts vastly amusing.

You perhaps don't believe me. Perhaps you mutter to yourself various epithets describing me as an excessive nerd. Perhaps you think my testimony is unreliable.

Read this.

Just for a bit of background, this is an excerpt from the writings of St. Irenaeus' massive work Against Heresies. He's attacking the absurdity of the Gnostic myths explaining the creation of the world, and in so doing uses this hilarious example.

Iu, Iu! Pheu, Pheu!— for well may we utter these tragic exclamations at such a pitch of audacity in the coining of names as he has displayed without a blush, in devising a nomenclature for his system of falsehood. For when he declares: There is a certain Proarche before all things, surpassing all thought, whom I call Monotes; and again, with this Monotes there co-exists a power which I also call Henotes,— it is most manifest that he confesses the things which have been said to be his own invention, and that he himself has given names to his scheme of things, which had never been previously suggested by any other. It is manifest also, that he himself is the one who has had sufficient audacity to coin these names; so that, unless he had appeared in the world, the truth would still have been destitute of a name. But, in that case, nothing hinders any other, in dealing with the same subject, to affix names after such a fashion as the following: There is a certain Proarche, royal, surpassing all thought, a power existing before every other substance, and extended into space in every direction. But along with it there exists a power which I term a Gourd; and along with this Gourd there exists a power which again I term Utter-Emptiness. This Gourd and Emptiness, since they are one, produced (and yet did not simply produce, so as to be apart from themselves) a fruit, everywhere visible, eatable, and delicious, which fruit-language calls a Cucumber. Along with this Cucumber exists a power of the same essence, which again I call a Melon. These powers, the Gourd, Utter-Emptiness, the Cucumber, and the Melon, brought forth the remaining multitude of the delirious melons of Valentinus. For if it is fitting that that language which is used respecting the universe be transformed to the primary Tetrad, and if any one may assign names at his pleasure, who shall prevent us from adopting these names, as being much more credible [than the others], as well as in general use, and understood by all?