General Overview (3)

2.1 The "material" for logic

While the art of the architect, for example, arranges the materials of the future house with a view to its balance and beauty, the logical art has for its "material" the act itself of reason. Logic is therefore rational not only in its proceeding, like every other specifically human activity, but also in its material.

So what do we mean by "act of reason"? It is the exercise (act) of a certain faculty or potency. As a potency, reason is identical to intelligence and, at first glance, is the faculty by means of which we know the true, as opposed to the will, by which we desire the good. But the intellective potency knows by different operations.


1. When the mind discourses from known premises to conclusions yet to be known, this is called reasoning, thanks to which man grows in his knowledge. For example:

What is spiritual is incorruptible;
But the soul is spiritual;
Therefore the soul is incorruptible.

The unity of this act comes from the consequentiality which unifies the terms 'incorruptible', 'spiritual', and 'soul', as well as the conclusion to which it looks, the demonstration of the incorruptibility human soul.


2. Reasoning, while constituting an undivided whole, is nevertheless divisible into a plurality of prior acts, which all deal with some enunciations similar to those in the example above. Each one of these acts is called a judgment, and produces a proposition. To judge means to attribute on term to another, saying for example that 'the soul is spiritual', or denying one term from another, saying for example 'the soul is not material'. In the first case, the intelligence declares identical in reality the terms united in the proposition, while, in the second case, it declares separated in reality the terms divided in the proposition. The unity of the act of judging comes from the link of composition or division produced by the mind, as well as from the meaning that results. In judgment, the mind is not strictly speaking acting as reason, since it is not "discoursing further", but rather as understanding (νοῦς), that is as an intuition of signification.


3. Although judgment is a simple act of affirmation or denial, the mode in which it grasps its meanings is complex, since it implies two terms and their relation. Therefore, the proposition can be decomposed into two notions; these correspond to a certain act of the mind which conceives meaning. This act is called simple apprehension, and its product is called a concept. Simple apprehension consists in taking an aspect of reality (or perhaps some notion that is thought), for example 'soul' or 'spiritual', without affirming or denying anything in its regard. The concept is the smallest intelligible unity, which cannot be further divided. It is to be noted that the mind does not normally perform "simple apprehension" in a pure state, but usually integrates it with judgments, reasonings, or some other type of discourse (exclamations, interrogatives, etc): we don't say 'bird' or 'study', but rather 'the bird is singing' or 'study is interesting'.

From what we have now explained, we can see that logic should study the order which should be adopted in each of the three acts of the mind to discover the truth which we do not yet know. Since such discovery principally happens in reasoning, logic is interested primarily in this act and subsequently in the others, insofar as they are ordered to or otherwise related to reasoning.