In the preceding pages we have framed, as we see it, the starting point for a Thomist epistemology, and in framing it have, in principle, already decided the question of realism. For, as soon as by reflection one becomes aware of all that is conveyed in the act of knowledge, it is no longer possible to prescind from realism, as though its factuality were still problematical. Such is the position we have taken. We shall now examine it further with a view to clarifying the grounds on which we have rested it. Before that, however, we shall consider and pass upon certain attempts to justify the realism of knowledge on a criticalist basis.
1. Regaining Reality via the Cogito
Descartes proposes two ways of doing this. Some neo-Thomists, not too surprisingly perhaps, have also entertained them.
a) There is the way of The Meditations, where, toward the end, Descartes seeks to re-establish contact with the external world, from which he had cut himself off in the beginning." Though (he argues) my clear and distinct ideas concerning the material world might possibly originate in myself, the same cannot be said of my sensations. These involve passivity, and this demands a proportionate active power from without. God, unless he be a deceiver, is not this power, for he gives me no reason to think it him and every reason to think it not. Consequently, the cause of my sensations must be traced to corporeal realities. In short, the external world must exist if there is to be a satisfactory explanation for the existence of sensations.
The argument carries an air of plausibility, and many adaptions of it have been formulated. But for all its plausibility, as a demonstration of the realism of our knowledge it will not do. To say that our sensations originate from an exterior causality is, of course, correct; but we definitely do not have to turn to this causality to become aware of the objectivity of sensation. Besides, this manner of approach gives a completely false twist to the mechanism of perception, for it implies that the sensory image is a purely subjective double of external reality and the direct object of perception, when as a matter of fact what is directly perceived, through the image, is external reality. Also, this recourse to the principle of causality is, from a criticalist standpoint, questionable; the principle, namely, is used before it has been justified. Evidently, this is not the way to external reality.
b) In the Discourse on Method Descartes reassures us of the realism of knowledge from another point of view, appealing to the certitude derived from perception of the self. For this, of course, there was the precedent of none other than St. Augustine. The existence of an external world (it is argued) is certified through indubitable recognition of the self, a recognition unique and immediate, a primary datum of reflective consciousness. In this apperceptive experience there is, apparently, neither distance nor obstacle between the subject that knows and the object that is known. For, not only are they on the same ontological plane; they are basically identical.
True enough; recognition of the self involves existence of the self or the thinking subject. But the argument proves little else, and even as far as it goes bears considerable qualification. Thus, it should be noted that the grasp of the self, however immediate and unimpeachable, is still a less perfect form of knowledge than what is derived through the medium of one's essence, per essentiam, the characteristic knowledge of pure spirits. Again, and most importantly, what our intellect in its present condition of union with the body grasps most immediately and directly, in short its proper object, is not some spiritual reality but the things of material nature. The basic experience, then, the one to which the mind awakens first, is that the perceived, or more generally the things about me, simply are - whether they are me or something else is a subsequent discovery. Consequently, those who stand on apperception of the self stop short of the actual source of knowledge, and furthermore, invite the dissociation of sensible and intelligible which we found seminal to the whole idealist movement. Finally, from a more metaphysical standpoint, this caution: Do not rest the absolute validity of knowledge on any particular grasp of being but simply on the realist import of the transcendental notion of being. This, as we have learned, embraces implicitly all particular being and is not confined to any one form of it.
2. The Elements of Judgment
We proceed now to a more positive consideration of the nature of judgment. Our principal source will be the earliermentioned work of Roland-Gosselin,18 who, in the formative part of his treatment, analyzes the act of knowledge with exceptional accuracy.
Our inquiry, at the moment, comes to this: what is knowledge, or what is it to know? We want the clearest possible answer to this question. There is just one way to get it, by examining with utmost attention the operations which the mind performs in the course of any act of knowledge. Not to protract the issue, we shall take it for granted that the perfective moment of knowledge, the one in which, in particular, the mind becomes distinctly aware of its knowledge is the judgment. From here on, accordingly, our inquiry into the nature of knowledge will be mostly an inquiry into the nature of judgment. Any instance of judgment will do for analysis. Suppose, then, we say "this curtain is blue." What are the constitutive elements of this judgment? Perhaps the first thing to notice is that there has been some connection or association established. I had before my mind the two notions "this curtain" and the color "blue." In saying "this curtain is blue" I made a mental composition of the two notions; which is to say, I attributed "blue" to "curtain." A judgment,then, embodies a relation of attribution or predication, one thing said of another.
There is, however, yet another and in a sense a more basic relation involved. In making the judgment that the curtain is blue I also tell myself, mentally at least, that what I am saying (the attribution) is true. What is meant by "is true"? Simply that the attribution made in the judgment is in agreement with reality. I find my judgment true because I see that between what it says and what is, between my mind and reality, there exists a relation of agreement or conformity - adaequatio rei et intellectus, as the Scholastic idiom has it. Thus, in a judgment such as here analyzed there is a twofold relation expressed, one between subject and predicate, another (no less discerned) between my thought and something that is, which latter phrase is in a way the definition of being. The second relation, that of agreement between mind and reality, constitutes the truth of the judgment and is an essential element of it. That it is essential is readily shown. For, suppose that I cancel the agreement by denying it, as in "no, this curtain is not really blue." In that case my first judgment is at once discredited as not in conformity with reality, or with what the curtain really is; and the relation that had been established between subject (curtain) and predicate (blue) is destroyed.
It would not be difficult to apply the foregoing analysis to any sort of judgment, though of course categorical judgments, in which the copula "is" is explicitly stated, lend themselves most readily to the purpose. But even where the copula is only implied, as in "the sun shines," the point at issue is evident enough. Here, as always, what my mind thinks is not true unless what it thinks refers to (in the sense of agrees with) reality, with what is. As for other judgments distinguished by logicians, whatever their form the same principle rules; affirmation or denial relates to reality. We may, then, conclude with Roland-Gosselin that "the analysis of judgment warrants the assertion that the object is not entirely determined by the subject, nor can it (the object) be affirmed by the subject unless it is thought in relation to what is. Failing this relation, a judgment is worthless." 19
A further word should now be said on an aspect of the judicative process to which some reference has already been made, namely, the reason why the mind affirms (or denies) one thing of another. Why, as in our earlier example, do I say "this curtain is blue"? What moves me to the affirmation? The answer is all important. I pronounce the curtain blue because I see it is blue; I see it clearly. Not only, in other words, do I judge the curtain blue, but I judge that I see it so, that the thing is manifest to me. In judgment, accordingly, the mind is governed by some manifestation on the part of the object, but the manifestation or evidence need not be a matter of sense perception. Indeed not; for in judgments of the most abstract kind I also see that what I am saying is true, but I see it intellectually. Thus in "the whole is greater than the part" the manifestation of the truth is intellectual. The eye can see (say) a whole apple, or part of one, but the mind sees that universally the whole is greater than the part. Evidence - the clear visibility of something - is a constitutive element of every judgment.
Kantian philosophers would reduce the formation of judgment to an act of pure synthesis, as though it was in no way determined by the external object but originated solely from the constitutional habit of the mind. This, it will be remembered, harks back to the idealist thesis that the mind is pure activity. We can only repeat that the realist, without going to the idealist extreme, also acknowledges the active role of the mind in judgment as in other operations. The mind does indeed by its own activity attribute the predicate to the subject; however, the attribution is not made blindly but only because the mind sees itself determined to it by the object. The pure synthesis of Kant, on the other hand, is to all intents and purposes a judgment without insight, a blind judgment. Yet the realities of human psychology do not support Kant; there just is no way for the mind to lay hold of what it does not in some way see.
In sum, a judgment, as analysis shows, is constituted by a twofold relation; for it rests ultimately on the validity of the mind's grasp of being, as well as on evidence of judgment's relation to being. "Every judgment," to call again on Roland-Gosselin, "presupposes that the activity of the subject [the mind] originates, at least in its logical aspect, with an evidence of being, and requires for its complete determination an evidence that the attribution, through which judgment is expressed, has relation to 'what is.' 20
3. The Realist Import of Judgment
Judgment, we have been saying, hinges on being. 'What is this being that controls the judgment and which, in turn, judgment expresses? Ruled out, in the light of earlier remarks, are idealist acceptations of it. So, the being to which judgment refers is not the more or less subjective being denoted by the copula. In "the curtain is blue" the reality which the mind has in view and by which it is measured does not lie in the "is" of the proposition. The being of the proposition as such is indeed posited by the mind; so much we may grant the idealist. But this is no more than the ens verum, the "being true" which both Aristotle and St. Thomas carefully distinguish from ens simpliciter, being in the absolute or objective sense. Ens verum ("the being of truth" as opposed to "the truth of being") refers only to the fact of conformity between the intellect and objective being. The latter (objective being) is precisely the being of which judgment is a function, so that the being which consists of the truth-relation (the aforesaid conformity) has no meaning except as it relates to objective being. It is utterly incorrect, then, to say in the idealist fashion that by my affirmation of being I myself have posited being, as though it were a form or determination emanating from my mind. Nor must the being which measures my thought be regarded as a pure object whose whole and sole reality consisted in being thought by the mind. The object-relationthat a thing stands in the relation of object to a subject - this, it should be plain, is not what constitutes the thing in the first place, any more than being as known can stand without the being of which it is but a particular mode. The signification of being transcends the signification of object; which is to say that being as such is prior to object as such. In the most formal sense, therefore, being is not what is known, or what is an object of knowledge.21
The being of which we now speak is the being which in an earlier context we defined as "that which is," a composite in which we distinguished the aspect "something" (the essence) and the aspect "which is" (its existence, or its ordering to existence). The latter aspect, moreover, was identified as the ultimate determinant or actuality of being. What we said of being is to be said of the real. The real is precisely that which exists or which stands in (actual or possible) relation to existence. Hence, it is all the same whether we say that knowledge relates to what is, or refers to the real, or has realist value. This seems simple enough; it is also decisive. To have understood it is to have found, as by a single stroke, the key to the riddle of realism in knowledge. Because in judging I take my measure from what is, my knowledge has by nature a realist import. So, once for all, to know (sc. as in judgment) is to perceive what is. Before leaving this discussion one further point concerning the real should be made. The real to which judgments refer and which they affirm is not all of the same generality but differs with the modes and the orders of knowledge. If I say "man is a biped," I make a universal affirmation of whose objective validity there can be no doubt, but the object affirmed (a universal nature) does not exist in the manner of this (individual) table on which I write and whose existence I also affirm. Likewise, "the end of the world" is thought of as something, though its realization lies in the future. In these and like instances my judgment does indeed refer to existent being as such, but according to modes of realization which are not all alike. Thought, in its realism, respects and reflects the mode of reality proper to each different object of thought. In sum, knowledge takes many forms, and its realism varies accordingly. To appraise the realism of its different forms, however, presupposes a more detailed study than is here feasible.
Conclusion. Though of necessity far from exhaustive, the foregoing analysis will have been adequate if, as we trust, it has demonstrated the foundation on which the realism of knowledge must stand. Some - improperly, we believe - have tried to find this foundation in the circumstances of sensation (which presumably needs an external cause), or in the perception of self (which includes the body, an external reality for the mind), or in the self-recognition of the spiritual subject (I think, therefore I am) - ways, all of these, more or less futile. The basic assurance of realism lies in none of them but solely in being, and this as discovered to the mind by its reflection in judgment. This is the sum and substance of what we have set forth.
A fuller treatment of the foundation of realism would take account of more concrete considerations as well, such as the demands of practical reason, the convictions of mankind, the assumptions on which men conduct human affairs, etc. Doubtless, there is something to be said for arguments woven around these elements of human experience, since practical life does indeed presuppose and point to the truth of realism. But they could never be a substitute for the direct evidence supplied in judgment, where, by reflection, the mind is granted an immediate awareness of the realism of its speculative knowledge. This is the knowledge (rather than that of the practical order) through which the fundamental conformity of thought with being is most verily apprehended. Thus, whether in metaphysics proper or in the theory of knowledge, the starting point is not in the order of action but in the reflective grasp of being, a grasp that occurs in judgment.