Chapter Three of Frederick Wilhelmsen’s book Man’s Knowledge of Reality introduces
the main elements of the noncritical Thomist epistemology that he opposes to the critical
epistemology already discussed.
He distinguishes between assuming a proposition and taking it as evident, then discusses the
origin of critical thought in a faulty philosophical anthropology.
He sketches the main outline of the Thomist approach to knowledge, and addresses some
objections from the critical side.
In the previous chapter, we covered the Cartesian starting point, and the critical and noncritical
positions that react to it.
Critical philosophers begin with the mind, while noncritical philosophers refuse this
starting point, and begin in the world.
For the noncritical philosopher, the first and foundational truth known to philosophy
is the truth that being exists; for the critical philosopher it is that thinking exists.
From the critical perspective, the noncritical approach merely assumes an existing world
and our unproblematic access to it, without sufficient justification.
For them, this means a failure to be sufficiently philosophical.
Wilhelmsen distinguishes between three types of propositions: assumed, evident, and proved.
A proposition is assumed if it is internally consistent and non-self-contradictory, but
is not proved.
A proposition is evident if its truth is seen immediately upon understanding the proposition.
It cannot be proved, and it need not be assumed.
A proposition is proved if it is seen as true, but only on the basis of the truth of other,
related propositions.
The guarantee of its truth is not contained in the proposition itself.
With these terms in place, Wilhelmsen argues that the truth “Things exist independently
of my mind” is evident for a Thomist, but can only be assumed by a Platonist or a critical philosopher.
The truth “things exist” is seen to be true immediately upon considering it, for
the noncritical philosopher.
The critical philosopher, because of what Wilhelmsen calls his Platonist theory of man,
cannot take it as evident.
For him, it can only be an assumption, a non-self- contradictory claim without an inner justification
for taking it as true.
According to Wilhelmsen, critical philosophy relies on a “Platonist” theory of man,
which is fundamentally dualist.
He is using the term Platonist generally to describe a type of philosophical anthropology,
not attributing Platonic doctrines to modern philosophers.
On this dualist theory of man, the soul is united to the body only accidentally, and
would retain its identity even if separated from the body.
The effect of this view on epistemology is to divide knowledge claims into two realms:
the ideal and the sensible.
Because the soul is not essentially related to the body, it faces a problem.
Sensation is the only source of evidence for the existence of material things outside the mind.
But if the mind and the body are divided in the way the Platonic theory holds, then the
mind cannot judge with certainty about things’ existence or nonexistence.
Critical philosophy, Wilhelmsen claims, is inherently Platonic about the nature of man.
It follows from the first principles of critique.
Because it holds body and sensation are separated from mind in this way, critical philosophy
takes on the task of reconnecting them, as the only way to regain certainty about the
external world.
Among critical philosophers, the absolute idealists elevate mind over the senses, holding
that all real objects are fundamentally mental objects.
Kantian idealists hold that sensations are ordered by our mind according to our mind’s patterns.
Both these factions agree on the broadly Platonic theory of man, however.
Wilhelmsen diagnoses the error of the critical philosophers.
They mistakenly think the act of knowing is an autonomous independent act, when in fact
knowing is always a knowing of an object in the world.
The critical error is twofold: first, abstracting the act of knowing from the knower, the being
performing the act.
Second, bending the act thus abstracted around, to doubt the existence both of its object,
and of its subject.
The abstracted act purports to doubt its own necessary conditions, an impossible situation.
For the critical philosopher, the existence of things can only be an assumption, because
he “insists on beginning philosophy with the naked certitude possessed by a disembodied
principle of pure thought understanding only itself and its own laws.”
Eventually the critical philosopher concludes that reconnecting the mental world with the
external world is impossible, either abandoning the quest for certainty, or substituting something
else for it.
This analysis would be disputed by critical philosophers as merely psychological.
Wilhelmsen accepts this charge, but since the authority of epistemology relative to
philosophical psychology (or anthropology) is one of the disputed issues, this attack
is not decisive.
The disagreement touches on first principles, frameworks, and there is an alternate framework
in which to approach questions of knowledge.
On the Thomist view, the existence of things outside the mind is evident to all acting persons.
Existence is not known by us in a concept, because our concepts do not grasp existence:
they are neutral in this regard.
And existence is not known as an object of sensation, because the senses grasp things
as having sensible qualities, not as existing.
Rather, the existence of things is known by the body-soul union that is the human person.
Not the isolated intellect or the isolated senses, but the being who possesses both of
those, grasps existence.
Put in its simplest form: we know things because we sense those things.
Critical philosophy retreats from this position, and gets tangled up in the impossible task
of trying to reunite the separated parts of the whole self.
Wilhelmsen ends this long chapter by replying to a common objection: what about false perceptions,
hallucinations and the like?
Don’t these prove that the mind cannot rely on the senses for evidence of things’ existence,
without some critical framework?
Wilhelmsen calls this objection a sophistry, and replies that false perceptions can only
be identified when contrasted with true perceptions.
If we were ever truly unable to tell the difference (and thus were in need of critique), we would
have ceased to act and to know as human beings.
Wilhelmsen assigns the ultimate responsibility for this error to critical philosophers’
mistaking the logical order for the real order.
The end result of the critical approach to philosophy is sense skepticism, the refusal
to accept the truth of sensation without critical validation.
After throwing the entire sense order into doubt, critique tries to rescue it using thought.
The mind looks within itself for some criterion that would restore authority to the senses.
(Think of Descartes’ Meditation Six.)
This is an impossible task, says Wilhelmsen.
Critique, being a work of reason, can never touch on the realm of sensation.
And because of this, intellect must recognize the boundaries of sensation, and accept the
reports of sensation as given.
We will read more about this relationship in the later chapters of the book.
That’s my quick overview of Chapter Three of Man’s Knowledge of Reality.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.