Reality 101: Bonehead Common Sense

Thomas suggests that each of our senses is a kind of touch ordered to different objects, and why not?:

All the other senses are based on the sense of touch.... Among all beings which have sense perception, man has the most delicate sense of touch.... And among men, those who possess the more refined sense of touch have the best intelligence.

So, who touches the most wins?

Not necessarily, because while there is knowledge in the senses, this knowledge can never be known by the senses. 

The eye, for example, sees color as a consequence of touching photons. But the eye has no idea of this. It cannot abstract from the colored shapes it apprehends, and know, for example, "redness." Nor does it know what it sees or even that it sees.

In short, the eye cannot reflect upon what it sees, much less on the meaning of sight. These latter reflections are wholly immaterial processes, whereas objects of the senses are material, e.g., surfaces, air vibrations, lightwaves, etc. 

Notice, however, that we still had to deploy a concept rooted in materiality -- reflection -- in order to make our point. The eye sees reflections of things, and our mind transposes this material process into a higher key in order to conceptualize its own functioning, which is again immaterial: senses reflect things, and thought reflects upon what is sensed.

This seems important -- immateriality deploying material terms to comprehend itself.

Agreed. Insofar as humans are concerned, we occupy an ambiguous space in the cosmic scheme between.... Or rather, between, full stop. The Great Between is necessarily a relation between perception and intellection, or between materiality and abstraction from it. This is the mysterious Place where Everything Happens. 

It seems that this relational space is also a kind of stage upon which our freedom plays out. Here is how Thomas describes it:

To judge one's own judgment: this can only be done by reason, which reflects on its own act and knows the relation between that upon which it judges and by which it judges. Hence the root of all freedom lies in the reason (emphases mine).

Well, good. This implies that freedom itself quintessentially occupies the ambiguous space between our judgment and that which it judges. 

Oddly enough, this seems to mean that the purpose of freedom is its elimination (or collapse, so to speak) via judgment of what is. Thus, judging wrongly about what is can never be true freedom, but enough about the left.

A contemporaneous example stripped from today's headlines: the preposterous Jake Tapper has published a bombshell book detailing how the White House engaged in a vast coverup and fooled us all about Joe Biden's dementia. What is -- Biden's decrepit condition -- was there for all to see, but the conspiracy was so effective that no one could perceive and judge it rightly: instead of seeing what is, they all saw what is not.

Which raises the question: why could everyone see it except for leftwing hacktivist journalists? Why were they not free to see what plainly is?

And what else do they not see?

Not enough time.  

Of course, we all know that keeping an open mind is a good thing, but not for its own sake; rather, the purpose of an open mind is to close it upon arriving at truth. Chesterton makes this same point:

Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Now, for Thomas, "the truth or falsity of an opinion depends on whether a thing is or not." So, when we reach what is, we ought to shut our mouths. Then chew and digest -- or assimilate -- it. Which is again borrowed from a material process, but isn't that the way it is? 

The intellect is (potentially) in conformity to everything that is. At the same time, nothing in existence conforms to the infinitude of the intellect, for which reason Thomas says

This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge.   

This infinite object of knowledge is also the object of infinite knowledge, which is to say, intelligible being.

There is nothing quite like a Principle for tidying the Intellect. About them, Thomas writes that "The principles of reason are those which are conformed to nature," i.e., to the nature of things. 

In a word, to reality.

How do we know a Principle when we find one? For the simple reason that "it is not even possible to think it can be false" (Thomas). They are self-evident, meaning that they cannot be understood without being believed (in other words, supposing you understand them, your mind spontaneously assents to them).

We ought to shut our minds on the principles of being, one of which is the principle of non-contradiction, which is equally the principle of identity. 

This may not sound like much, but it is the root of anything we can say of being and reality: a thing either is or is not, and these are truth (if it is) and falsehood (if it is not). 

Bottom line: being is, and we can know it. This reduces to absolute intelligence and infinite intelligibility, so keep chewing.

*****

Back when I started college, I was so bereft of knowledge that I had to take an introductory course colloquially known as Bonehead English. But why is there no course on Introduction to Reality, i.e., Reality 101, or Bonehead Common Sense? I certainly could have used it. The things I have believed in the course of my life!

Not enough time.

It seems one wouldn't have to be introduced to reality, but the Matrix gets to them so young these days, that it is possible to go straight from child to fully indoctrinated NPC without ever having made contact with it. So an introduction is indeed in order. 

Man is an animal that can be educated, provided that he does not fall into the hands of progressive pedagogues.

Modern education delivers intact minds to propaganda. 

The fool, to be perfect, needs to be somewhat educated, 

The learned fool has a wider field to practice his folly. 

The leftist does not have opinions, only dogmas. 

Intelligence is the capacity for discerning principles. 

Those who reject metaphysics secretly harbor the coarsest. 

Intelligence is a train from which few do not deboard, one after the other, in successive stations. 

All truths converge upon one truth, but the routes have been barricaded. 

Thought can avoid the idea of God as long as it limits itself to mediating on minor problems.

Etc. Taken together, it seems that thinking about reality involves taking the intellectual train all the way to the last -- and from the first -- station, which is to say, Being. Anything short of Being is not reality, precisely. For Owens,

We are sure of the truth of the proposition that subsistent [or necessary] being exists.

This is because an infinite regression of caused causes "would not account for the least being in the world." Rather, "There would merely be an infinite series of existential zeros" which "would never add up to any being at all. In their sum total they would remain from start to finish existentially zero."

I'm not saying this is the best way to regard being, rather, the only way, because if one doesn't start with being -- with reality -- there is literally no way to get back to it: start with an innocent dualism, end in a vicious dualism. 

There cannot be "two or more subsistent beings," because "all effects are from that one source." A vertical source, mind you, not a horizontal or temporal one. This principial source or ground 

occupies no space, It is not in any place, in the way definite extension locates a thing.... It has accordingly no past nor future, but has its existence all together. Its duration is an eternal now.... it is entirely unlimited. It is infinite (ibid.).

Here again, this is the last station, the one truth upon which all truths converge, but to which the routes have been barricaded. Barricaded by progressive pedagogues, ideological thought police, and farcical journalists.

Which leads to some form of cosmic anthropomorphism, which foolishly places "the nature and activity of the first cause on the same plane as our own." Which is to say, Genesis 3 All Over Again. 

A philosophy of being is the "process of making explicit what is implicit in the fact of existence." Now existence is a fact, or to hell with it. But it is not a self-explanatory fact, much less self-caused. Rather, "the production of things out of nothing is called creation, and the product creatures."

Here again, to usurp the first cause and elevate contingent creatures to Creator is just G3AOA.  

Now, only in subsistent being do essence and existence coincide, for its essence is to exist, precisely. For the restavus contingent beings, our being is an accident. Again, we didn't have to be, but here we are, participating in a beingness for which we are not responsible. 

Rather, being was already here when we arrived on the scene, because it is always here and cannot not be here. Our being here adds nothing to being itself, which is again infinite, and infinite + x = infinite.

Now, about this matter of truth. It is 

what the mind strives to attain in its own endeavors. It is reached when the intellect knows something as it actually is.... In a word, truth is reached in a judgment, when the judgment reaches the actual being of a thing (ibid.).

Well, good: the attainment of truth is possible, nor do we have to wait for Jake Tapper to reveal it to us:

Where there is being, truth can be had by an intellect capable of knowing that being. Truth accordingly follows upon being, when being is considered in relation to any intellect that can know it.

If this is not the case -- if the intellect is not conformed to intelligible being -- then truly truly, we are done here: "The being may be called true, because it is able to ground the truth that is in the intellect." In short, "truth is being as conceived in relation to the intellect." 

Any alternative this is a non-starter. Nevertheless, we are immersed in these metaphysical non-starters which begin and end in the nothingness of finitude -- i.e., in existential nothingness because dismembered from intelligible being. Without being, nothing isn't even nothing, because nothing is just non-being; it is dependent, or parasitic, on being. 

Now, "The same world that exists in reality is the world that is known in thought." If this is not the case, then our knowledge again amounts to nothing, for knowledge of non-being isn't even knowledge, just absurdity.  

As intelligence, then, it it has as its object being; for as true all being is intelligible (ibid.).

Isn't it? It certainly seems so, i.e., that "the human intellect has an unlimited range" because it is ordered to unlimited being, precisely: "The kinds of things that a man can know through his intellect are consequently unlimited." 

In conclusion this morning,

To know the truth about a thing, then, means to know that your judgment about it agrees with the thing as it actually is.... the natural desire of man to know tends not only toward knowing things but also toward the truth about them....  

Knowledge of truth, accordingly, is the perfection of the human intellect. It is the goal toward which the intellect strives (ibid.).

Even if the goal has been barricaded, or if one deboards before the train has reached the station. 

In any event, we can all agree that postmodernity is a metaphysical train wreck.