Animal Intelligence and Concept-Formation

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE AND CONCEPTFORMATION ON READING Dr. Mortimer Adler's assessment of The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes about a year ago, I was excited by Mr. Adler's remark at one point that Peter Geach, in a book entitled Mental Acts/ had convincingly shown that "human concept-formation ... does not consist in a process of abstraction at all."2 Like most other philosophers, I had often wrestled with the difficulties and perplexities surrounding the various theories of human understanding , so it will not be difficult to understand my enthusiasm on being alerted to a work which promised to show why Locke was wrong in holding that " he that thinks general names or notions are anything else but abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones, taken at first from particular existences, will ... be at a loss where to find them."3 Accordingly, I picked up a copy of Mr. Geach's book at my first opportunity, disposed to discover therein the long-standing oversight or confusion which had led so many philosophers to look on ideas as the result of some sort of abstractive process. The following pages, then, may be read either as a critical response to Mr. Geach's presentation, or as an expression of the disappointment I experienced in terms of what Dr. Adler had led me to expect. I also hope, beyond this, that the following pages may be of some interest and illumination to other philosophers in their own assessments of this historically complex and philosophically difficult topic. A Structural Outline is given below. 1 Peter Geach, Mental Acts. Their Content and their Objects (London: Routeledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 131 with Bibliography and Index. 2 Mortimer J. Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967), p. 187, reference to fn. !l!l on p. 817. • John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, par. D. 48 44 JOHN N. DEELY STRUCTURAL OUTLINE I. The Logical Structure of an Historical Controversy-p. 44. II. The Construction of Mr. Geach: Aquinas in Caricature--p. 45. III. The Achievements of Sense and Their Relation to Concept-Formation in Man According to Aquinas--p. 55. A. Rational processes and animal intelligence--p. 56. B. The traditional language of faculties-p. 59. C. The Notion of vis aestimativa and of experimentum-p. 60. I. The levels or grades of sensitive life--p. 61. 2. The third or highest level of sensitive awareness--p. 64. 8. Textual difficulties--p. 67. 4. Resolution of difficulties: the synonymy of vis aestimativa and experimentum--p. 70. D. The accidental and the essential universal-p. 72. E. The proper contrast between animal intelligence (vis aestimativa) and the perceptual roots of concept-formation in man (vis cogitativa )-p. 77. F. The sphere of animal consciousness and the world of human awareness --p. 79. G. Rational processes and animal intelligence: summary restatement -p. 81. IV. Aquinas and Mr. Geach: A Study in Parody-p. 84. A. The problem of particular judgment&-p. 85. B. The role of the intellectus agens in concept-formation-p. 86. V. Conclusion: Toward the Roots of the Caricature--p. 88. I. The Logical Structure of an Historical Controversy. There are, as everyone knows, a relatively small number of major issues in philosophy which are decisive in that the position one takes with respect to them determines everything else one may consistently contend about man and the world. One such fundamental issue is the problem of the sense of the distinction between mind and body and the nature of the relations that obtain between the terms of this distinction. According to one school of thought the principles necessary and sufficient for settling this issue are to be found in the writings of Aristotle, particularly as interpreted and developed by Aquinas. Thus, as W. I. Matson points out in a perceptive and scholarly presentation of "Why Isn't the Mind-Body Problem Ancient?", "from Homer to Aristotle, the line be- ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE AND CONCEPT-FORMATION 45 tween mind and body, when drawn at all, was drawn so as to put the processes of sense perception on the body side." '' Within this perspective Aquinas was...