[lit-ideas] The Peripatetic Axiom

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 14:39:49 -0400 (EDT)

In a message dated 6/9/2013 6:35:05 A.M. UTC-02,  donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx 
writes:
"In Popper's view, traditional empiricism  rests on a key and false dogma - 
that there is nothing in the mind that has not  arrived there by way of the 
senses. This dogma is not merely slightly but  radically mistaken - and it 
radically mistakes the role of sense experience in  our learning about the 
world. It even mistakes the 'character' of sense  experience."
 
Call me a thomist (I'm not) but I rather use 'peripatetic axiom' for  this.
 
 
The Peripatetic axiom is: 
 
"Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" 
 
"Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu"
 
 It is found in Aquinas, De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19.
 
Thomas Aquinas adopted this principle from the Peripatetic school of Greek  
philosophy, established by Aristotle [last name unknown]."
 
Aquinas argued that the existence of God can be proved by reasoning from  
sense data.
 
Aquinas uses a variation on the Aristotelian notion of the "active  
intellect" which he interpreted as the ability to abstract universal meanings  
from 
particular empirical data.
 
Cheers,
 
Speranza
 
---
 
References:
 
Aquinas, Thomas. Quaestiones disputatae de veritate.
Leftow, Brian (ed.,  2006), Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, Questions on God, 
pp. vii et seq.
Macmillan  Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1969), "Thomas Aquinas", subsection 
on "Theory of  Knowledge", vol. 8, pp. 106–107.


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[lit-ideas] The Peripatetic Axiom

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