What's In A Word?

 

To My Readers: For the first time since January of 2020, I'm on vacation! The only week I could take was the week Lent begins. Thankfully, I'm close enough to a Traditionalist Chapel where I am, so I can enjoy activities with family and friends while keeping my religious obligations as well. This Lent, I'm working on becoming less of a hotheaded man--a lifelong struggle. I have made improvements (believe it or not) but I still have much work to do. Being abrasive and quick to anger often becomes a way of life as a NYC lawyer. Thanks to my guest poster, A Simple Man, for providing this week's post. Please pray for this most pious and intelligent young man that God may keep him strong in the One True Faith and bless him abundantly. He is helping me to keep this blog going in order to spread and strengthen the Faith in these perilous times. I will return with my own post next Monday, 2/22/21.

On January 18th, I published a post against one Aaron Debusschere a Vatican II sect apologist, who attacked my charge of heresy against the Vatican II document Gaudiam et Spes on his blog. On February 13th, Debusschere responded with a post addressed as a "letter" of sorts to A Simple Man. In his post, he accuses me of not addressing his arguments (!) and not wanting "rational discourse." I'll let Simple Man decide if and when he wants to reply via a post here, on The Romantic Catholic (Debusschere's blog), or via private e-mail exchange. I added an Addendum to my post of 1/18/21 as it was easy enough to show that Debusschere--like every Vatican II sect apologist I've encountered---is clueless. You can read the Addendum after the Conclusion section here:

introiboadaltaredei2.blogspot.com/2021/01/romanticizing-heresy.html. 

At the top of the post remains the link to Dubusschere's blog. I think you might enjoy it, along with the fine post below by A Simple Man.

God Bless you all, my dear readers---Introibo

What's In A Word?

By A Simple Man

What is a female, at least as far as humans go? It’s a seemingly simple question. Insofar as we are considering the most general case, dictionaries from decades past would provide rather straightforward answers:

“Among animals, one of that sex which conceives and brings forth young.” – An American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster, online version of the original 1828 edition

“fē′māl, adj. of the sex that produces young: pertaining to females: […] —n. one of the female sex, a woman.” -  Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language (Part 2 of 4: E-M)  originally published in 1908, online version hosted by Project Gutenberg

However, if you were to turn to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary in its most current form [as of December 8, 2020], you would find the following under the definition of female (bold is emphasis mine): “of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs; having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.” These terms introduce ambiguity.

In like manner, Webster’s 1828 dictionary and Chambers’s 1908 dictionary define males as the sex with the capacity to procreate or beget young. The modern Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition for male likewise reads like a gender-swapped version of the definition for female, including “having a gender identity that is the opposite of female.” Needless to say, this has placed circular reasoning within the two definitions themselves, so as to render the concepts of male and female nonsensical; using these modern definitions makes equivocation and homunculus arguments (the latter being an informal fallacy where a concept is explained in terms of the concept itself, without first explaining the original concept) impossible to avoid.

Some might argue that that’s the point; after all, if you cannot agree on basic definitions, then how can anyone make proper arguments, or reason rightly?

Why is language important? Although it would be erroneous to say that thought is impossible without language (as one medical study from 2016 regarding people with global aphasia has shown), it cannot be reasonably denied that language is the principal means by which humans communicate with each other. As languages have changed and evolved throughout the centuries, new words have been invented to designate new things (i.e. computer, telephone, rocket, etc.), while others have fallen into general disuse or restriction to specialized fields, sometimes to the point of becoming obsolete (when’s the last time you heard the words accable, conspurcation, pickeer, or regest?). However, even as languages change, and certain words may shift in spelling or form, the essence of the things that those words refer to does not change in the process. This is especially important with fundamental aspects of reality and human nature, since a poor or erroneous understanding of fundamentals will result in a skewed understanding of reality.

Although there are philosophical variations with regards to how definitions are considered or interpreted (as the Winter 2019 edition of “Definitions” from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy demonstrates), our focus will be descriptive definitions, which not only aim to communicate the meaning of a particular thing (whether it be an object, a concept, an idea, and so on), but also aim to be sufficient in that meaning. In other words, a descriptive definition is one that should provide an adequate understanding of what the object being defined, in fact, is. [ASM’s note: to be even more specific, we are looking at descriptive definitions in a “real” sense, aiming to describe the essence of the thing in question. This is in contrast to a “nominal” sense, wherein the definition seeks to describe the ideas we have about the thing in question, even if those ideas are entirely separate – or even contrary – to the real essence of the thing itself.]

How are we able to provide definitions at all? Per St. Thomas Aquinas, our ability to understand corporeal things is due to the intellectual power of the soul. In particular, regarding to how we acquire intellectual knowledge, he says: “I answer that…Aristotle chose a middle course. For with Plato he agreed that intellect and sense are different. But he held that the sense has not its proper operation without the cooperation of the body; so that to feel is not an act of the soul alone, but of the "composite." And he held the same in regard to all the operations of the sensitive part. Since, therefore, it is not unreasonable that the sensible objects which are outside the soul should produce some effect in the "composite," Aristotle agreed with Democritus in this, that the operations of the sensitive part are caused by the impression of the sensible on the sense: not by a discharge, as Democritus said, but by some kind of operation. For Democritus maintained that every operation is by way of a discharge of atoms, as we gather from De Gener. i, 8. But Aristotle held that the intellect has an operation which is independent of the body's cooperation. Now nothing corporeal can make an impression on the incorporeal. And therefore in order to cause the intellectual operation according to Aristotle, the impression caused by the sensible does not suffice, but something more noble is required, for "the agent is more noble than the patient," as he says (De Gener. i, 5). Not, indeed, in the sense that the intellectual operation is effected in us by the mere impression of some superior beings, as Plato held; but that the higher and more noble agent which he calls the active intellect, of which we have spoken above (I:79:4) causes the phantasms [ASM’s note: a phantasm, as St. Thomas uses it philosophically, is the likeness of a particular thing, or the means by which representations of real things are perceived and understood by the intellect; see ST I, q. 84, a. 7, ad 2 & ad 3 for more.] received from the senses to be actually intelligible, by a process of abstraction. According to this opinion, then, on the part of the phantasms, intellectual knowledge is caused by the senses. But since the phantasms cannot of themselves affect the passive intellect, and require to be made actually intelligible by the active intellect, it cannot be said that sensible knowledge is the total and perfect cause of intellectual knowledge, but rather that it is in a way the material cause.” – ST I, q. 84, a. 6

In other words, it is through the senses of the body that our intellect perceives concrete things; from these perceptions, our intellect is capable of abstraction, by which we can understand the object as it is. (Such a process is not to be confused with subjective experience in the sense often used in modern times, which asserts that our encounters with things cannot provide any objective information about them. Objective information is necessarily true regardless of who subjectively experiences it.) Thus are we capable of attaining knowledge; furthermore, it is through this process of apprehension and abstraction that we are able to generalize, and understand things which are universal or immaterial. (Questions 84 through 89 of the First Part of the Summa Theologiae consider the acts of the intellect and how we are capable of understanding. However, the chosen excerpt suffices for the topic at hand.)

Per the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia, the essentials of knowledge are as follows: “Knowledge is essentially the consciousness of an object, i.e. of any thing, fact, or principle belonging to the physical, mental, or metaphysical order, that may in any manner be reached by cognitive faculties. An event, a material substance, a man, a geometrical theorem, a mental process, the immortality of the soul, the existence and nature of God, may be so many objects of knowledge...Knowledge supposes a judgment, explicit or implicit. Apprehension, that is, the mental conception of a simple present object, is generally numbered among the cognitive processes, yet, of itself, it is not in the strict sense knowledge, but only its starting-point. Properly speaking, we know only when we compare, identify, discriminate, connect; and these processes, equivalent to judgments, are found implicitly even in ordinary sense-perception...Truth and certitude are conditions of knowledge. A man may mistake error for truth and give his unreserved assent to a false statement. He may then be under the irresistible illusion that he knows, and subjectively the process is the same as that of knowledge; but an essential condition is lacking, namely, conformity of thought with reality, so that there we have only the appearance of knowledge. On the other hand, as long as any serious doubt remains in his mind, a man cannot say that he knows. "I think so" is far from meaning "I know it is so"; knowledge is not mere opinion or probable assent...”

To summarize, we are able to provide descriptive definitions of things because our intellect is capable of apprehending these things as they are. To deny this capacity of the intellect is to implicitly abolish the very possibility of objective truth, for we would be unable to truly differentiate between things in themselves, and thus unable to differentiate between truth and falsehood.

What are the consequences of abandoning this approach to knowledge? To deny the possibility of descriptive definitions requires an epistemological and metaphysical worldview that is incompatible with Catholicism, and Thomism in particular. As has been seen from various figures in past centuries, their attempts to abandon the realism of Scholastic philosophy has resulted in numerous, often contradictory theories of knowledge. In particular, René Descartes’s decision to start from a position of absolute doubt has ushered forth entire schools which reject or distort the traditional concept of metaphysics altogether; without Descartes’s starting point, we may never have arrived at the notorious ideas of individuals like John Locke (who, as an empiricist, aimed at dethroning Aristotelianism and Scholasticism from the universities), Immanuel Kant (who professed that he “had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith”, restricting knowledge to an empirical realm such that God and the soul were unknowable by the human mind; furthermore, he insisted that we are incapable of experiencing things in themselves), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (whose ideas have been acknowledged as the precursor to existentialism [ASM’s note: Introibo recently wrote about some of the errors of existentialist philosophy in “Encountering Error”], phenomenology, and the philosophies of more notorious individuals like Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche).* Thus have we meandered our way to the modern world, where mainstream philosophy and epistemology have become so deranged that objective truth is rejected altogether: “If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.” – Mackie, John Leslie. Ethics: inventing right and wrong. London, Penguin Books, 1977, p. 38 [ASM’s note: J.L. Mackie (1917 – 1981) was an Australian philosopher known for being a moral skeptic and a staunch atheist; the aforementioned book infamously opens with the claim that “there are no objective values.”]

Such is the scourge of the philosophies employed by Modernism, which has been covered before on this blog. Papal condemnations of Modernists and their ideas are many:

“[…]Let us turn for a moment, Venerable Brethren, to that most disastrous doctrine of agnosticism. By it every avenue to God on the side of the intellect is barred to man, while a better way is supposed to be opened from the side of a certain sense of the soul and action. But who does not see how mistaken is such a contention? For the sense of the soul is the response to the action of the thing which the intellect or the outward senses set before it. Take away the intelligence, and man, already inclined to follow the senses, becomes their slave. Doubly mistaken, from another point of view, for all these fantasies of the religious sense will never be able to destroy common sense, and common sense tells us that emotion and everything that leads the heart captive proves a hindrance instead of a help to the discovery of truth. We speak of truth in itself — for that other purely subjective truth, the fruit of the internal sense and action, if it serves its purpose for the play of words, is of no benefit to the man who wants above all things to know whether outside himself there is a God into whose hands he is one day to fall...” -  Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (On the Doctrine of the Modernists), 1907, par. 39

“[…]There are to be found today, and in no small numbers, men, of whom the Apostle says that: "having itching ears, they will not endure sound doctrine: but according to their own desires they will heap up to themselves teachers, and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables" (II Tim. iv. 34). Infatuated and carried away by a lofty idea of the human intellect, by which God’s good gift has certainly made incredible progress in the study of nature, confident in their own judgment, and contemptuous of the authority of the Church, they have reached such a degree of rashness as not to hesitate to measure by the standard of their own mind even the hidden things of God and all that God has revealed to men. Hence arose the monstrous errors of "Modernism," which Our Predecessor rightly declared to be "the synthesis of all heresies," and solemnly condemned. We hereby renew that condemnation in all its fulness, Venerable Brethren, and as the plague is not yet entirely stamped out, but lurks here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully here and there in hidden places, We exhort all to be carefully on their guard against any contagion of the evil, to which we may apply the words Job used in other circumstances: "It is a fire that devoureth even to destruction, and rooteth up all things that spring" (Job xxxi. 12). Nor do We merely desire that Catholics should shrink from the errors of Modernism, but also from the tendencies or what is called the spirit of Modernism. Those who are infected by that spirit develop a keen dislike for all that savours of antiquity and become eager searchers after novelties in everything: in the way in which they carry out religious functions, in the ruling of Catholic institutions, and even in private exercises of piety...” – Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum (Appealing for Peace), 1914, par. 25

“[St. Thomas’s] teaching with regard to the power or value of the human mind is irrefragable. "The human mind has a natural knowledge of being and the things which are in themselves part of being as such, and this knowledge is the foundation of our knowledge of first principles" (Contra Gentes, II, 1xxxiii). Such a doctrine goes to the root of the errors and opinions of those modern philosophers who maintain that it is not being itself which is perceived in the act of intellection, but some modification of the percipient; the logical consequence of such errors is agnosticism, which was so vigorously condemned in the Encyclical Pascendi… if we are to avoid the errors which are the source and fountain-head of all the miseries of our time, the teaching of Aquinas must be adhered to more religiously than ever. For Thomas refutes the theories propounded by Modernists in every sphere, in philosophy, by protecting, as We have reminded you, the force and power of the human mind and by demonstrating the existence of God by the most cogent arguments…It is therefore clear why Modernists are so amply justified in fearing no Doctor of the Church so much as Thomas Aquinas.” – Pope Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem (On St. Thomas Aquinas), 1923,  par. 15, 27

In conclusion, it is incumbent upon us in these days to stand up for objective truth, to articulate the importance of acknowledging reality as it is, and to point out the errors which spawn from ignoring such. Even in the face of those who would scream that we are simply being “intolerant” or “bigoted”, we must affirm and uphold the intrinsic value of definitions which describe things in themselves. Ambiguous and subjective terms are a recipe for logical and rhetorical disaster, as can be seen from the actions and behavior of those who can say (with a straight face!) that a human born with male genitalia and chromosomes is, in fact, a woman; that a marriage can include sodomitical, zoophilic, or even objectophilic relationships; that non-Catholics do, in fact, possess means of salvation separate from Jesus Christ and His Church; and so on.

To behave as if such definitions (and the concepts derived from them) are arbitrary or irrelevant is to reject your God-given nature as a rational being.

 

* For additional reading about the philosophy of Descartes and his intellectual successors compared to that of St. Thomas Aquinas, I highly recommend the essay written by the Traditionalist Mario Derksen titled “Against the Skeptics: How Thomist Realism Refutes Radical Skepticism”; it covers more details (which were glossed over in this post for the sake of brevity) regarding the origin of modern philosophical skepticism and how St. Thomas explains the workings of human knowledge.