Another Look at the First Principles of Knowledge

ANOTHER LOOK AT THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE PHILOSOPHY of mind of Aristotle and Aquinas a very important role is given to the so-called " first principles." These are the mental laws or rules according to which the mind must function. Such principles would be, for example, the principle of non-contradiction ("For the same thing to hold good and not to hold good simultaneously of the same thing and in the same respect is impossible ") ,t the principle of excluded middle (" It is not possible that there should be anything in the middle of a contradiction, but it is necessary to assert or to deny any one thing of one thing ") ,2 and so on. In this essay the investigation into the principles of knowledge is to be a psychological one, not a logical one. In other words, it is to be an inquiry into the actual workings of our mind, not an inquiry seeking to devise a logical system, perfectly consistent and coherent, along the lines of a mathematical system. In such a system principles would have the role of axioms. But in the "psychological " inquiry we are pursuing we are seeking to detect the basic drives, forces, and activities which characterize our mental make-up and which form the foundation underlying all our thinking, determining the kind of activity that human thought is. These basic features of our conceptual system do have some characteristics in common with logical axioms, but they should not be equated with, nor reduced to, such axioms. Many philosophers of late have considered the principles exclusively in terms of verbal formulations or logical formulae. However, a philosopher must also investigate the basis for the validity of such formulations. Such a basis must lie within 1 Aristotle, Met. r, c. 3, l005bi9-!i!O, translated by C. Kirwan, Oxford, 1971. All quotations from Aristotle will be taken from this version. • Aristotle, Met. r, c. 7, 10llb23-24. 566 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 567 the mind itself as it actually functions in real situations. Hence in a "psychological " inquiry it would be wrong to think of the principles as propositions already explicitly formed in our mind as it were innately or a priori. Still less are they logical formulae. Rather they should be thought of as forces within the mind itself guiding it to act in a certain way. Just as the law of gravity is not a proposition floating in the air but a force pulling all solid objects towards the center of the earth, so is, for example, the principle of non-contradiction (from now on abbreviated to PNC) a force guiding the mind to conceive things as being one thing and not at the same time not that thing. These principles can be described or expressed in propositions, just as physical laws can be captured in mathematical formulae, but this does not mean that the propositions are explicitly formulated and lodged in our minds. The formulations are merely abstractions, expressing perhaps the most important and salient aspects of that far greater reality-an energy or force of many diverse effects-which is the ground of the formulation. Just as a description of a man is not the reality that is the man himself, neither is a formulation of a principle the mental reality which the formulation seeks to express or describe. Aristotle and Aquinas called the principles first principles, because they lie at the base of our knowledge. They are ultimates, not because we first (temporally) know the principles and then consequently (temporally) come to know other things but because the whole structure of our conceptual system is built on them as on foundations. (This will become clearer as we proceed further.) The origin of the principles is puzzling. We do not seem to acquire knowledge of them the way we usually come to know things. We do not sense them. We do not seem to reason to them, though we may have to reason to explicit formulations of them. Normally they can be detected only through careful reflection on our knowing and thinking processes. We are not usually explicitly aware of them. Many people never have them explicitly as...