The Operation and Object of the Intellect

a) Operation of the Intellect — b) Object of the Intellect

a) Operation of the Intellect

The first and basic operation of the human intellect is the activity called simple apprehending or simple knowing, and this consists in the forming of concepts or ideas. When we say “forming” we do not mean that the intellect “makes up” its elements of knowledge. On the contrary, we mean that the intellect is operative to take in in its own way (hence the word “forming”) the understandable realities which constitute its object. In a somewhat similar way the senses may be said to “form” their knowledge — not by creating it or projecting it ready-made out of themselves, but by taking it in in a manner consistent with their own nature, structure, and function.

Simple apprehending produces a concept or idea. A concept or idea is the intellectual knowing of a reality — the mind’s grasp of the essential nature of a thing. It is not the reality itself; it is the intellectual reproduction of the thing in the mind. It is the mind’s proper possession of the thing in knowledge.

The second operation of the intellect is judgment. Judgment is the act by which the intellect affirms or denies the agreement or disagreement of two concepts. Two concepts are brought together, and the intellect judges whether they agree (affirmative judgment) or disagree (negative judgment). The expression of a judgment in words is called a proposition. “Man is mortal” is an affirmative proposition, expressing the judgment that the concept man and the concept mortal agree. “Man is not a brute” is a negative proposition, expressing the judgment that the concept man and the concept brute disagree.

The third operation of the intellect is reasoning (also called inference or discursive thought). Reasoning is the act by which the intellect moves from known judgments to a new judgment — from known truths (called premises) to a new truth (called conclusion). The simplest form of reasoning is the syllogism: “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal.” In the syllogism the two premises lead inescapably to the conclusion.

b) Object of the Intellect

The proper object of the intellect (in the present state of man, in his earthly existence) is the essences of material things conceived in universal.

We see how the intellect rises from sense data to the purely intelligible. In this life, the service of the senses is naturally indispensable. Sense must function first or intellect remains inoperative. In all its ideas, the intellect takes some beginning from sensation, from the grasp of material things. Therefore, we repeat, the per se primo or proper object of intellect is, in this life, the essence of material things, the essential truth about material things.

The intellect could come directly at supra-sensile truth were it not limited, as it is in man’s earthly state, to a beginning in sensed reality. We have seen that the intellect cannot directly know the singular as singular. An animal senses, and its sensations are of individual, concrete things here and now present. But the intellect grasps things in universal. When I see this horse, my vision is a seeing of this horse, this individual. But when my intellect grasps the nature of what I see, it grasps horse — what any horse is, what every horse is, the essential nature of horse as such. The intellect grasps a universal; it cannot directly know the singular as such.

Yet the intellect does come to know singular things — indirectly. It knows them by a kind of return upon the sense-knowledge from which it took its beginning. It knows the singular in the universal concept: it knows this horse by knowing horse and then reflecting back upon the sense-experience of the individual.

The intellect also knows supra-material things — God, angels, spiritual substances — but only indirectly, by analogy from its knowledge of material things. We know God, for instance, by noting the perfections found in created things and attributing these, in a transcendent and infinitely higher degree, to God.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have studied the operations of the human intellect: simple apprehension (the forming of concepts or ideas), judgment (affirming or denying the agreement of concepts), and reasoning (moving from known truths to a new truth). We have studied the object of the intellect and have seen that its proper object, in this life, is the essences of material things conceived in universal. We have seen how the intellect rises from sense data to the purely intelligible.