The Human Person: A Beginner's Thomistic Psychology

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The Human Person: A Beginner's Thomistic Psychology by Steven J. Jensen
I previously read Steven J. Jensen's “Good and Evil Actions,” which was a complicated examination of the nuances of the Thomistic approach to objective moral values. This book covers Thomistic ground but at a much lower level. In fact, the chief virtues of this book are clarity and accessibility. Jensen illustrates his points with clear examples that make his points understandable. Jensen builds up an understanding of human action by working from a base foundation to some deep understandings of human psychology and action.
For my purposes, it is useful to follow through the chain of Jensen's argument.
Chapter 2: Sensation – Jensen begins with the properly basic Aristotelian proposition that “all our knowledge begins with the sense” and that “to sense is to act in some manner.” He then moves on to distinguish between “transient actions” and “immanent actions,” which is interesting but the pay-off for this distinction does not become apparent for a few chapters, but when the pay-off comes it is worth it. “Transient actions” are “transitive”; they move out from the agent and transform the subject/patient. “Immanent actions” are those which move into the “agent” and cause the agent to transform itself into the object of the action. Thus, a cat seeing a mouse is an immanent action; the act of seeing doesn't transform the mouth, but rather the agent effects a change in itself by bringing the form of the mouse into itself. This is all based on “sense realism” – sensation allow us to know the real world. (In a lecture I heard, John Searles said that we should think the radical idea that our senses reach out and touch the things they sense.)
Chapter 3: Skepticism – Jensen performs a survey of modern philosophy. Descartes, Hume, Locke and Berkeley substantially disconnected our senses from our ability to know reality. Locke argued that our knowledge is primarily of the ideas in our mind. In contrast, Thomas argued that we knew reality through our senses which we understand by our ideas. Locke and Thomas disagreed on what it is our senses primarily sense. For Thomas, our vision primarily perceives color, for Locke it was shapes and sizes. The difference plays out in misperception: we might wrongly perceive the moon as small, but we will not be wrong about its color.
Chapter 4: Internal Senses – We know things by reasoning from the object of the thing's activity to the activity to the power that permits the activity and finally to the substance that underlies everything else. (In contrast, the order of being is from substance to power to activity.) There are four “internal senses”: Common sense, Imagination, Estimative Power, and Memory (There are five “external senses”: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.) Common sense integrates the senses into a common experience; the Estimative Power permits an organism to judge whether a thing is dangerous or useful; Imagination is the power by which we retain what has been sensed; and Memory is the power by which we remember a particular incident in our experience. Memory goes beyond mere sensation and includes things that are not sensed, such as the time at which a thing was sensed. The power of estimation in animals is “instinct”; in human beings it works with reason.
Chapter 5: The Emotions – The internal and external senses are powers by which we know things (“Knowing Powers.) Living beings also have powers by which they desire things. (“Desiring Powers.”) Desiring powers include the Will and Emotions. Emotions are defined by the desire to obtain some good or the desire to avoid some evil. They are also defined by whether the good is easy to obtain or the evil easy to avoid. Emotions related to such “simple” goods or evils are called “concupiscible passions.” When goods or evils are more difficult, then the emotional drive is correspondingly greater. Emotions related to difficult to obtain goods/difficult to avoid evils are “irascible passions.” The concupiscible passions related to desiring a good are: love (impulse), desire (movement), and pleasure (rest.) The concupiscible passions related to avoiding an evil are: hate (impulse), aversion (movement), and sorrow/pain (rest). The irascible passions depend on whether the movement is toward or away from the object. For a desired good, the irascible passions are: hope (toward) and despair (away.) For a feared evil: daring (toward) and fear (away).
Chapter 6: Mechanism – Here is the pay-off for the distinction between transient and immanent actions, which is added to Searles' Chinese Room thought experiment. The issue is whether the mind is simply the brain. Searle's Chinese Room example indicates that grammar is not semantics, i.e., rule following is not understanding. From a Thomistic standpoint, if mind is brain then mind activities are neuronal activities. But neuronal activities are always transient action; one neuron triggers another neuron. Understanding requires an immanent action: something has to change in the subject. No number of transient actions will amount to an immanent action.
Chapter 7: Materialism and Dualism – So, we have mind and brain; how are they related? Materialism says that there is only one thing – matter. But we have seen the problem with saying that mind and brain are the same thing. Dualism doesn't solve the problem since it doesn't explain why this mind is attached to this body or one body or why the mind needs sense organs, etc. The Thomistic solution is to reject dualism and posit that there is only one thing – one substance – which is a composite of form and matter, i.e., the form of the soul, which includes the power of the mind, and the matter of the body.
Chapter 8: Hylomorphism – In this chapter, Jensen unpacks the meaning of “hylomorphism,” i.e., the understanding that living beings are a single substance composed of form and matter. All things, in fact, are composed of form and matter. A table is “prime matter” (or “first subject”) that is a table because it has the form of a table. Dan is a human being because he is “first subject” organized into a human being by virtue of the form of the human being – the soul – which includes powers such as reason, desire and cognition. Jensen explains:
“The merits of this explanation are best seen in contrast to the alternatives. The chief merit centers around the unity of the agent. The dog as a whole sees. Dualism is forced to say that it is the soul alone that senses, but for some mysterious reason this soul must be tied to the body....Of course, materialism would also expect that a dog should need a body for its activities. What else is there (according to materialism) besides bodies? As we have seen, however, materialism has difficulty identifying what exactly is doing the sensing. Is it the chemicals out of which the dog is made? It would seem not. Chemicals are not the kinds of things that can sense.” (p. 126-127.)
Chapter 9: The Problem of Universal Knowledge – This is the Platonic Form conundrum. When we say a word, what is the reality of the thing are we referring to? Nominalism says there is no reality; “cats” do not exist. There are only individual things we lump together and refer to as “cats” for convenience. Realism says that there really is a Platonic form of “Cat” existing in a realm of ideas, which all cats share in. The Moderate Realism of Thomas and Aristotle says that the thing which makes a cat a cat actually does exist and is incorporated into the real things that exist as “cats.” The power of human cognition is to “abstract” out the ideas from the material forms into a “phantasm” of the idea, i.e., all the things that make up a cat or a triangle without reference to any particular cat or triangle. Humans have two cognitive powers – the “active intellect” and the “passive intellect.” The active intellect actively abstracts out the forms of things from sense experience. The passive intellect receives the abstracted phantasm free of individual details to recognize the common elements shared by the abstracted thing with other things, i.e., the ideas.
Chapter 10: Reason. The human mind understands things through their universal attributes. The mind can combine and divide. Interestingly, reason takes a linguistic turn. Truth is found in the combining and dividing. A statement “black” is neither true nor false, but when the idea of “bird” is attached to “black” as in “the bird is black,” then the statement can be true or false depending on its correspondence to reality. Reason also understands relations. Jensen uses this point to pay-off Hume's chestnut that we cannot know causation because causation is not a thing we can experience; all we can know is that when A happens, B is usually found somewhere around it. If reason, and therefore knowledge, was limited only to senses, then Hume would be right, but reason can do more than associate, it can know relationships, such as cause and effect. (Jensen effectively debunks the concept of animal language in the balance of the chapter.)
Chapter 11: Immortality – Reason is a unique power in that there is no bodily organ that reasons. Eyes see, memory is found in the brain, but the immanent action of reasoning, whereby the agent changes himself is not a brain activity, as explained previously. Consequently, reason resides in the immaterial part of the human substance, i.e., the soul, which Thomas argues is the “substantial form” of the person. Since a person exists by way of the immaterial substantial form, the person will continue to exist as long as the soul exists. The soul will not lose existence by being broken up since it is a single thing – a form – and it does not receive its existence from the human body and so will not disappear when the body disappears.
Jensen offers more Thomistic arguments for believing that the soul is immaterial. Specifically, the mind is flexible. It receives non-physical information in a non-physical way. For example, remember a room you once were in. You can “see” the room's shape and dimensions, but where is this thing you are then experiencing? In addition, physicality limits because “matter individuates.” Physical things are inherently this thing or that thing, but the point of reason is that it is universal and shorn of individuality. If the mind were physical, it would not be able to perform that feat of abstracting concrete particulars.
Chapter 12: Freedom – Jensen turns to the power of the will. The competing theories of free will are: Determinism, compatibilism and the agency view. Determinism says human actions are determined by environment and genetic factors; agency says that all decisions can be made freely without regard to influences; compatibilism says that human actions are free insofar as they are made based on the person's beliefs and desires, although those beliefs and desires may be imposed from outside.
Chapter 13: The Will – The mystery of freedom is solved by looking at choice. Choice aims at an object, namely the good as known by reason. The good is that which completes a thing. Goods are desired as an abstract good; the good is individuated through the reasoning process as the good becomes more concrete. Significantly, the will is not a bodily power and is not found in a human organ. The acts of the will are: Wanting/Willing, Intending, Consenting, Choosing, Using, and Enjoying. Love of another is not an emotion; it is willing the good of another for their own sake. (p. 237.)
Chapter 14: Free Decision – Given the will's necessary orientation to the good, Aquinas might be a determinist, but he rejects determinism. Jensen begins to unravel whether Aquinas is a compatibilist or agency theorist by considering the four Aristotelian causes: material, efficient, formal and final. The first two are internal causes; the last two are external causes. The four causes relate to different kinds of necessity in the will: Conditional necessity arises from a final cause; coercive necessity arises from efficient cause; natural necessity arises from the material and formal causes.
When these causes are considered, the answer is yes and no. There can be no efficient cause that determines the will since the will is an inclination. A person can be forced to act in a given way, but that force does not mean the person wills the act. Final cause is determinative; eliminate the goal and the choice disappears. Likewise, the will is constrained by the material and formal causes; humans cannot will save as humans.
With respect to the efficient cause, what causes the will to act? This seems to be a quintessentially immanent act since the will causes the agent to instantiate some form, such as the desire for health. The will causes the will to act; the will acts on itself to make a decision and to deliberate in a sequence of willing that eventually leads back to reason. This is worth reflecting on:
“As we have seen, reason bends back upon itself. With human beings, we have self-awareness; we have a mind aware that it gazes upon the world. A similar self-reflection is found in the will, which also has entirely immaterial activity. Reason, however, bends back upon itself with regard to the formal object, while the will bends back upon itself with regard to efficient causality. The will alone, then, moves itself to act or not act. It seems that Aquinas might be willing to accept some version of the agency view.”(p. 250.)
Chapter 15: Purpose – The question of human purpose is subject to the same analysis that any object's purpose is given. A knife does not make its own purpose. It receives its purpose from the form they have and the use to which it is given. In the same way, humans do not make their own purpose. Their choices do not give them purpose. Rather, humans receive their purposes as anything else. Of course, this means that there must be something that instills that purpose. Since the human mind has the ability to discern the purposes of things, it should also have the ability to discern the existence of the purpose-giver.
And there it is. We started with acts and ended with God.
This is a richly rewarding book