GNOSEOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

I. The object of theory of knowledge

The formal logic studied up to this point has been forced to presuppose the fundamental
notion of knowledge, which are objectivity of our concepts, the existence of truth, and the
ultimate foundation of the human judgments. It belongs to philosophical logic to examine
these problems more attentively. On the other hand, they enter within the formal object of
general logic which is the relationship between truth and reality.

This study has received various names throughout history gnoseology noetics theory of
knowledge are surely the most adequate names, since they clearly point to the object of this
part of philosophy, human knowledge .the denomination of critique of knowledge is also
acceptable, as long as it is purified of its critical taste connect to particular positions of
modern philosophy that we shall examine later; criteriology, the study of the criterion of
truth, is too ancient and limited a name.

The variety of names for this subject is the effect of the diverse circumstances in which it
has been involved along the history of philosophy. The problem of knowledge, which as such
is a typically modern question, was studied a bit anarchically through the centuries of
speculative reflection in the ancients and medievals we shall find it in the study of logic and
psychology, and thus not as an autonomous subject. That which at that time most resembled
modern critique was the so-called major (or material) logic which confronted the most arduous
arguments (for example, the problem of the universals), differently from minor (or formal) logic.
However, this division was born in late Scholastics.

With the advent of the modern philosophy, the critical problem clearly presented itself that is,
the necessity to justify the knowledge of reality, a fundamental problem of the gnoseologistic stage
of philosophy between Descartes and Kant. According to this tendency, the examination of the value
of knowledge is the beginning of philosophy, since before confronting any analysis of reality, one
must determine the limits of our rational capacity, in order to avoid any overly ingenious realism,
which does not resist the arguments against our conviction of truth. Classical metaphysics accepts
the challenge without, making of critique the absolute prime motor of philosophizing, because it
does not accept that there can be a release of thought with respect to reality. Knowledge can only
be studied as the knowledge of being, through reflection on itself (the intelligence is auto-
transparent, clear to itself). Here occurs the paradox that it is ones own knowledge that has to
judge its own validity without being able to recur to the instances.
 In the philosophy of Suarez the new elements of the theory of knowledge take on
systematic consistency, while at the same time they reflect the issue of the Scholastics of modern
times. Metaphysics according to Suarez, is the study of being in general, whose concept is
formed through abstraction of all the matter and also abstracting from all the deiffrencies that
dintinguish concrete beings. Being is the essence that does not imply contradiction, while still
not being pure fiction (quod in se nullam involvit repugnantiam, neque est mere conficta per
intellectum) that is, the essence that can exist (quod produci potest, et constitui in esse entis
actualis, quae ex se apta ad esse, seu realiter existere). In other words, the concept of being
abstracts from the actual existence of the objects (it is the possible being), even if at the same
time it is conceived of in function of the existence, it is that which can exist or exists in reality.
Metaphysics, like every other science that proceeds necessarily from abstraction, finds refuge in
possibility, while concrete reality is a modality or realization of the possibility. The intelligible
world of Platonism is now most translated in the possible world conceived in abstraction, and
understood as the separation between essence and existence. To think is the capacity to conceive
the essence of a thing, abstracting from its actual concrete existence.

For this reason it is also important to remember the distinction of Suarez (in reality,
common to the other Scholastics) between the formal and objective concepts. The formal or
subjective concept is that through that act is known (every individual possesses his own formal
concept, but the objective concept of many coincide, for example, if everyone thinks of 2plus
2). The subjective concept is thinking, the objective concept is the thought, that which present
itself to the subject: the object (a notion that will become fundamental in modern philosophy).
There immediately emerges the problem of the distinction between the real thing (but it seems
strange to say that the thing is in the objective concept); instead, if ones says that the objective
concept is not the thing, but rather that which is thought of the thing, one could perhaps conclude
that the mind does arrive at reality, but only at its mental representation.

As with other Scholastics