ウェルブムと形象 : トマス・アクィナスの認識理論との関連で

Abstract

Over the past few decades a considerable number of studies have been made on the following different questions all of which are indispensable for understanding accurately the theory of cognition in Thomas Aquinas. 1. Is Aquinas an internalist or an externalist? 2. In what sense can we call him an epistemological optimist? 3. Is he a representationalist or a direct realist? We believe that it is possible and meaningful to discuss them together to understand his theory of cognition. It is, needless to say, because these questions are closely related each others, but it is not all of my reasons to do so. For it seems that the notion of verbum (or conceptus, conceptio, intentio intellecta) could be a connecting knot of the three different problems. Especially, what is pivotal here for us is, I assume, to clarify in what manner the notion of verbum is characterized by Aquinas in contrast with that of species intelligibilis. First, we will begin by considering in what way Aquinas differentiated the verbum from the species intelligibilis while taking both of them as some media or "similitudines" by which (quo) our intellect cognize the extramental world. Species is regarded as the beginning of our intellectual cognition process while verbum is taken as a "formata" (product) by our intellect's active operation which presupposes the "informatio" by the species. This differentiation by Aquinas of the two mental resemblances will elucidate the question whether he is a representationalist or a direct realist. If the representationalism claims that any kind of mental representation needs to be accessible to the cognizer, Aquinas cannot be called a representationalist. It is because his theory requires the species which represents the outer world and of which the cognizer cannot have any awareness. As to the second question whether Aquinas was an epistemological optimist, we could safely claim that he is an optimist in the sense that we easily make mistakes in the formation of verbum which requires our intellect's compositional operations. Aquinas acknowledges, however, that species's "informatio" of simple quiddity is always veridical because it includes no active composition by our intellect, which could not let us call him an epistemological optimist in its full sense. Concerning the first internalist/externalist question as well, we could conclude that Aquinas's theory of cognition would admit the validity of the both of the seemingly incompatible positions, for it needs to have both of species and verbum as indispensable media of our intellectual cognition. Species does not appear to our consciousness in our first-order cognition about the extramental things, while without it our intellect could not form the verbum of them which appears, needless to say, to our awareness as the end of our cognitive process. Aquinas is an internalist as to the characterization of the verbum, but according to him our intellectual cognition as a whole is supported by the species the warrant of which is not the internal evidence in our consciousness.