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CONCLUSION
THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM
THE PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
In this Conclusion we are going to retake the problem we had proposed in the Introduction.
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§ 1
INTELLIGENCE AS PROBLEM
In our Introduction we had referred to the fundamental problems of western metaphysics and had mentioned that the first thing we had to do was to reach an agreement about what metaphysics is, because metaphysics is the real definition of what philosophy is. If by philosophy we understand the search for the radical ultimateness of things, that ultimateness is what from the point of view of its content has been called metaphysics, as long as we reach an agreement as to the meaning of the “metá” in meta-physics. We had observed that, strictly speaking, it is a “trans”, i.e., something that in each existing thing, is what it is, but at least transcends all of its particular determinations. Therefore, philosophy and western metaphysics, is a philosophy of transcendentality.
But we had mentioned we were not going to deal with the internal problems concerning that order of things, we were going to be dealing with something different. We were going to try to disclose the fact that the transcendental order in itself has an intrinsically problematic texture. And it is from that problematic texture how the problems that the transcendental order has within itself are proposed. The transcendental order is an intrinsic problem in its own internal context. In order to see this, we were appealing to the history of metaphysics, which is what we were dealing with in the preceding chapters.
In that history we were trying not only to inform ourselves about what some philosophers had thought —we chose six, which will always seem somewhat arbitrary to some—, but also we tried to disentangle through them the {323} intrinsic texture of the transcendental order. The appeal to the history of metaphysics had as a goal to untangle the internal structure of those metaphysical positions. Through the great personalities of the history of metaphysics we discover that underlying what they say in metaphysics there is an internal texture, which is what we were interested in unraveling.
We came across, in the first place, with Aristotle —who is somewhat the predecessor of western metaphysics— and with the idea of entity (ón). Afterwards, we saw that in western metaphysics the transcendental order has been riding on different structures; one such is the intrinsic finitude of entity in St. Thomas. We next found the importance, which the uncertainty of intelligence and reason acquires with respect to the truth of things in Descartes. In Leibniz, the whole transcendental order rests on the idea of the possible. In Kant, it is the idea of the objectual. Finally, in Hegel it is the absolute reason.
The reflection on these philosophies allows us to discover not only the internal problematics of the transcendental order as such, but something else, that at the bottom of all those metaphysics there is a profound unity.
We could not say that this unity consists in the succession of some philosophers since, after all, each one tries to start from zero and that would be too little. Can we say then, that it is the case of an internal and objective dialectic of reason in its stepping march towards the transcendental order? This, which is the thesis of Hegel, would be too much. We find ourselves facing something different, something that as we can detect in the very history of metaphysics is real and something like the incorporation of philosophical thinking to the transcendental order; an order that, as we have been repeating, is intrinsically problematic.
{324} Therefore, instead of confronting all the problems this transcendental order carries all along, we shall concentrate our attention on just one of them, which can act as a summary. One that certainly is radical, in the first place, as a matter of fact, since it underlies all of the metaphysics we have covered up to now. Indeed, if we review everything metaphysics has said to us from Aristotle to Hegel, we find that metaphysics began with Aristotle talking to us about the noús, intelligence, and if we wish to include St. Thomas, a conceptivizing intelligence. For Leibniz metaphysics is the order of reason and for Hegel absolute reason. In the end, what underlies all these metaphysics is a certain structure of “philosophical thinking”. But in addition, it is a matter of right because as we are going to see, the internal unity of philosophical thinking is not only that way as a matter of fact, but constitutes the very root of the conceptivation of the transcendental order.
I. Ratio, intellectus concipiens, noûs
Ratio, intellectus, noûs, undoubtedly constitute the primary and radical unity from where all the problematics and all the conceptivation of the transcendental order emerges. But the problem consists in finding out how Western metaphysics has understood that unity or rather, how it has understood the radical unity of philosophical thinking. Let us start from the last.
Hegel would tell us that philosophical thinking is the work of reason, understanding by reason precisely the conceptivizing thinking (das begreiffendes Denken). On that point he gathers most of the inheritance from Kant, for whom metaphysics is a consideration of the objects by means of the concepts of reason. Hence, reason —in Kant and in Hegel, but above all {325} in Hegel— is riding upon itself. Then one would ask, is this admissible, is reason really riding upon itself?
Let us consider, in the first place, what Hegel is claiming about that kind of dialectic generation through concepts... about what, an object? But the object is not right there. If the object were there in front of him, the problem would be completely different. Not having the object in front of him, what is it that provides its direction, its stepping march, its adequation or lack of adequation to the internal dialectic motion of thinking in the elaboration of its concepts? If we have a dog right in front of us, we can make a dialectic from anything we wish, for example, of the living substances, and to have a conceptivizing thinking (begreiffendes Denken) of the dog. But, if we do not have the dog, where does the terminus of the dialectic motion come from, in which however, Hegel says is the supreme concretion with respect to which all the other moments are abstract? From this point of view it is not admissible.
The same thing happened with Plato. Plato was trying with his dialectic of separated ideas to arrive by means of divisions and subdivisions... to where? He was not able to reach beyond the last species, the átomon, eídos; but from that point to the individual there was much to cover because, as Aristotle would say, the individual cannot be reached by means of ideas, it can be seen right there in front of you. Then, it is a question of asking whether the method followed by dialectics is sufficient or not when one starts from that supposition. While for Plato there was a subject, for Hegel there is no prior object to dialectics, and therefore, dialectics would remain essentially suspended on itself.
But this is not enough, because reason consists in conceptivizing the object “insofar as conceptivizing”. In Hegel what reason faces directly is the understanding (Verstand). Let us admit {326} that posture; then it is clear that in Hegel reason produces the internal motion by itself through a kind of disquietude; however, we have already seen that this is not conceivable if there is no object present right in front you. What might be the source for that internal motion of reason, that disquietude that leads it to overcome the dialectic stages of its progressive determinations? With his understanding man “is there now” (Sp. “está”) among things, he is understanding just as much as he is seeing with his eyes and hearing with his ears. Reason is something different, it is something that precisely goes towards (Sp. va hacia), it is a going, a stepping march. Kant —we shall return to this idea— had clearly seen something concerning this problem when he said that we would have to determine what was the interest that motivated reason to transcend understanding. Whether this is an interest or not —we shall refer to it further on—, what is certain is that reason is engaged in a stepping march towards the object. It is not simply something in which one is, but something in which one moves by oneself “towards” (for the moment, we put aside the question of what objective reason may be). Hence, reason is essentially, intrinsically and constitutively a quaerens thinking (Tr. that quests), a thinking that searches; reason is not a conceptivizing thinking (begreiffendes Denken), but a “questing” (Sp. “quaerente”)1 intelligence. This means that reason does not rest on itself, and the least we can say is that it rests upon intelligence.
This brings us to the second determination, intellectus. What is the intellectus?
Classical philosophy had always understood that it was an intellectus concipiens, that conceives ideas. The senses give us the things and the intelligence elaborates, builds or conceives ideas about them. However, independently from any other type of considerations, there are two that must be made about this conception. It is not a question that it may be incorrect at all, but that it seems insufficient to me, at least for two reasons.
{327} In the first place, because it seems as if to conceive is something like parading the intelligence before reality as a mirror and then some concepts are obtained, analogous to the way the eyes perceive some colors or the ears perceive some sounds. But that is not the case. Concepts, even the most rudimentary, are something that man has searched for and continues to conquer; in other words, they are the precipitate and the sediment of that “questing” reason, of that “questing” intelligence in its own intellectus. The concept is not something primary, a primary talent for intellection, but is one of the ways reason has for finding things. We can definitely say that mankind has always used concepts, even without knowing it. However, between confidence in the rational concept and the progressive stepping march within it that dominates in the world since the era of the Greek, and what a concept could be in the era of Hammurabi, there is a lot of ground to cover. In other words, conceptivation is one of the ways with which reason cleverly devises to search for things with its “questing” function.
We might then say —this is the second point— that at least there is a concept that is not forged by reason, the concept of entity, the concept “it is” (Sp. “que es”). But this is a great problem. From the time of Aristotle, entity became something problematic; it needed the operation of noús, it needed to capture in some way that which entity is, since it is not something immediately given and upon which we can easily build a philosophical speculation. This forces us to reconsider the problem of intellectus and refer it to the problem of noús.
Reason does not rest upon itself, but upon a conceptivizing intelligence; therefore, upon an intelligence. Intelligence, insofar as conceptivizing rests upon an intelligence that does not have to be necessarily conceptivizing, but {328} as Aristotle would say, is simply the apprehension of entity by noús; and the essential part of noús, as Aristotle tells us, is the lógos, which mentions that which is being apprehended. Reason essentially remits to conceptivation, which in turn, is remitting to intelligence.
II. Sensibility
It might appear we have been able to surface above the problem, when in reality we have only begun to rise. If objects were not in front of us, nothing of what appears within the process of reason would be able to take place. But then, where do objects come from in order to be present before man? We are told it is from the senses, which are the ones who give us things, and afterwards, the intellectus starts running its conceptio, its ratio. That is the question. The moment intelligence has become a problem, eo ipso and congenerously sensibility has also become a problem, that through which things are given. It will be necessary, then, to start from this convergence between sensibility and intelligence in order to see in what the radical problem consists, which in my opinion, underlies the whole of metaphysics.
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§ 2
THE IDEA OF SENTIENT INTELLIGENCE
Let us start by recalling that things are given to us in sensibility. This is a theory that gravitates over the history of philosophy, at least from the time of Plato (perhaps from an earlier time) up until Hegel. According to it things are “given” to us in sensibility and what intelligence does is to “conceive” them. Hegel would say that what intelligence does is to generate them conceptively. From my own point of view I would prefer to say that what intelligence does is to search for them. At any rate, it would be an operation supported by things previously given. There can be no objection to this as long as we are told what sensing is and what is given in that sensing. That is the question.
I. Sensing and that which is given in sensing
The idea of sensing, the function of sensing has been subsumed throughout the history of philosophy under two concepts; each one of them has oscillated in preponderance with respect to the other throughout all that history. These two concepts are intuition and impression.
In the first place, it is said about sensing that it is an intuition, the first and elemental intuition with which things are given to us, this is intueri, to see. It is undeniable that we have this in sensation, understanding the act of aísthesis as an act of sensing and not taking it in the psychological sense, which the term has. It is indubitable that {330} this moment of intuition exists, however, is it useful to formally characterize what we say, that things are given to us in sensing, in sensibility? Not at all. We are precisely ignoring what is essential to the question. That which I am seeing, I am seeing sensibly. In what does sensing consist? By constant reference to sensible perception as an intuition, we end up considering it as a diminutive knowledge, with respect to which intelligence holds the full concept; it presents full intellection as riding on that sensation. Is this true? Is sensing a kind of lower degree of intellection? I do not refer with this to what Leibniz could appeal when he would see in sensibility a confused intellection, but to something much more trivial and radical. If sensation was to contain nothing more than intuition, it would not have been of much concern to philosophy; it would have been the most modest and trivial type of knowledge, but it would have been placed on the line of the types of knowledge. However, just to perceive alone is not the same as to know, it is not the same as to know intellectually.
But in second place, we can recall what Kant would reply to this. That this intuition gives us something, which is precisely the impression, to be affected (Eindruck). This is the second concept, as long as we are told what that “impression” is. Can we characterize sensibility by saying it is purely and simply intuition as impressed? It all depends on what is meant by impression. Is it true that impression is what the empiricists said, which Kant repeats taking it as the starting point for his whole philosophy in Transcendental Aesthetics, namely, that impression is something that affects the subject? If it were this way, we may well ask how could Kant manage to arrange the whole order of the categories. How is it possible that starting from being affected, which is nothing but to be affected by impressions, the whole universe of objects {331} with which man lives his daily life and upon which science is mounted could be constituted. This would be something difficult to explain. Because the impression is not only to be affected, but also to be affected in such a way that in it the terminus that affects me becomes present, the “otherness” (Sp. alteridad) becomes present. With the sensation of heat I also have present, in the form of a thermal affection, the heat of the object that affects me. There is, therefore, that second moment of otherness, by virtue of which the impression is not just to be affected, but is also to be affected or presented with otherness. Only when this being affected by presenting the otherness assumes the intuitive form, is the moment we can talk about sensing. And this demands that we reach an agreement about what the otherness that impression presents to us, is.
Here starts the important difficulty of the problem. Undoubtedly, what is presented to me is something like this table, this microphone, this glass of water, in other words, that which is presented is a content. This is an undeniable truth, but with all the psychological and physiological differences proper to the case, a dog would also be able to see this table more or less the way I see it. Is my perception of the table the same as the dog? From the point of view of content, it might be (at any rate, let us not enter into this problem). What occurs, however, is that no content is present in sensibility unless it is present in a previous mode of confronting the thing. In the animal always, and in man ninety-nine percent of the cases, the living is confronting the otherness present in his impressions in a very concrete way, as the stimulation, i.e., in a stimulative form (Sp. estimúlica) 2. Pure sensing —and man inasmuch as he shares that condition with the animal— apprehends in an impression the otherness that the stimulus is. The dog apprehends the stick of his owner, the face of his owner, but apprehends them as one {332} more stimulus, as an objective sign of the reactions he may have.
Is this the case of human sensibility? We were saying that in ninety-nine percent of the cases it is evidently so. Man has millions of cells in his organism, all of which are stimulated. If man had to perform a function as the one we are going to immediately describe concerning the synaptic transmission of a neuron in the human body, the human species would not have been able to appear on Earth. Be that as it may, in some minuscule zone proper to some dimensions of the sensory receptors, it is not the case that it may not apprehend the stimuli and apprehend them as such stimuli, but apprehends them as stimulating realities. Thus, stimulation and reality are two formalities through which things are apprehended. And man obviously perceives a stimulus, but it is as a real stimulus, something that does not occur with the animal that purely and simply suffers the stimulation and moves within it.
To this moment of otherness, which is proper and specific to man, is what I have called impression of reality. I have spoken of impression of reality, not to indicate it is the case of two impressions (one for content and another for reality), but to denominate a potiori the totality of the impression of otherness, which is presented to us in a sensible impression. To us, in that otherness, not only is present the color, the sound, the temperature, etc., but also the colored reality, the sonorous reality, and the thermal reality.
This is the common deficiency of both the empiricist philosophy and the philosophy of Kant. By talking to us only about being affected, the empiricist philosophy has intended to make a criticism of what substance and causality are, and if we exclusively {333} refer to what sensible impressions give us insofar as affectations of the subject, that criticism might be justified. But the truth of the matter is that sensible impressions present otherness to us in the form of reality. And this totally changes the problem. Then it is not true what Kant says when he affirms that sensibility primarily gives us a multiplicity destined to be unified by the “I think”. On the contrary, the truth of the matter is that the first thing that sensibility gives us is reality. Reality does not mean here thing-in-itself insofar as opposed to “phenomenon”, as Kant pretended, but means an intrinsic and elementary characteristic of all sensible perceptions.
Nevertheless, this makes it necessary to ask an unavoidable question. Indeed, what is intelligence? Does it really perform the act of intellection on the objects given this way?
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1[Tr. note: Zubiri Spanish neologism “quaerente” from Lt. quaerens, equivalent to questing]
2 [Tr. note: Zubiri neologism from estímulo, stimulus]