Year: 2020

[4.8] Robert Grosseteste on Exemplarism and Truth

A. L. KomáromiLeave a comment

Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253 AD) in his treatise On Truth elaborates on the concept of exemplarism and truth, and states that:

  • Platonic forms, as eternal models or examples, exist in God’s mind.
  • Things (and not just propositions) have truth-value.
  • The Aristotelian conception of truth as conformity/adequation of the speech to the things is modified by Grosseteste, by considering the speech to be that of God, the eternal Word. In this sense, each thing can have two truth-values: (1) “the eternal reason of a thing specifies the very kind of thing that thing is” – which is always true, and (2) if the thing fulfills its ethernal function – which can be true or false.
  • In this way, we can epeak or more truths, but at the end “for Grosseteste any use of the term ‘truth’ involves in some way a reference to the supreme truth, God.”

The following OntoUML diagram presents Robert Grosseteste’s model of truth:

Robert Grosseteste on exemplarism and truth
ClassDescriptionRelations
God’s(Mind)“Grosseteste’s exemplarism […] is in part an adaptation of Plato’s theory of Ideas to a Christian framework. Like other medieval thinkers, Grosseteste takes the existence of an eternal, self-subsistent realm of Platonic Ideas to be inconsistent with the dependence of all things on God. Nevertheless, following Augustine and Seneca, he does not reject the Platonic ideas outright. Rather, he treats them as eternal models (exempla) or, as he also calls them, reasons (rationes) of things in God’s mind.“creates Thing
EternalWord“Grosseteste claims that the eternal Word is itself its very own conformity to itself and thus may be identified with truth.exclusive part of God’s(Mind); describes EternalModel
EternalModel“Grosseteste’s exemplarism […] is in part an adaptation of Plato’s theory of Ideas to a Christian framework. Like other medieval thinkers, Grosseteste takes the existence of an eternal, self-subsistent realm of Platonic Ideas to be inconsistent with the dependence of all things on God. Nevertheless, following Augustine and Seneca, he does not reject the Platonic ideas outright. Rather, he treats them as eternal models (exempla) or, as he also calls them, reasons (rationes) of things in God’s mind. Like the Platonic ideas, these reasons function as paradigms or models created things can accord with or fall short of. God looks to these reasons of things in creation, somewhat as a craftsman looks to the idea in his mind of what he is to make.
Given that God is absolutely simple, the reasons of things in God’s mind must in the final analysis be identified with God. Thus Grosseteste moves between speaking of the reasons in God’s mind as exemplars or models and speaking of God himself as such.”		exclusive part of God’s(Mind); model for Thing
Truth“truth (veritas) is a conformity between things and the eternal Word. […]
As for created things, their truth is their conformity to their eternal model or reason in the eternal Word.[…]
the truth of propositions—a subclass of things—is their conformity to their eternal model or reason in the eternal Word. “
Each Thing (and Proposition) can have one or, two truths:
● (1) “On the one hand, the eternal reason of a thing specifies the very kind of thing that thing is, and simply in virtue of existing as an item of a determinate kind a thing will necessarily conform to its exemplar in this respect and be true. Thus all human beings and all propositions are true, in this sense, in that they are the kinds of things they are, this being specified by their exemplar. A human being is a composite of body and soul, and a proposition is ‘the statement of one thing about another or one thing from another’ […]
● (2) “On the other hand, the eternal reason specifies the second perfection a thing ought to have but may nonetheless lack. In this sense a human being will be a false human being if, for example, she is vicious, falling short of the perfection of virtue specified in the eternal reason of a human being. Likewise, a proposition will be a false proposition if it fails to perform the function of a proposition, this being to state things as they in fact are in the world. Thus, the ordinary notion of propositional truth, described by Aristotle as ‘to so be in the thing signified as speech says,’ is a matter of a proposition’s conformity, in respect of second being, to its eternal reason, and this is for it to perform the function perfective of propositions, namely, to be in conformity to the states of affairs it asserts.”		mediates between EternalWorld and Thing
ConformityConformity or adequationcharacterizes Truth
ThingThing
PropositionProposition is a sentence with tuth-value.subkind of Thing

Sources

  • All citations from: Lewis, Neil, “Robert Grosseteste”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

First published: 03/09/2020

[4.7.1] Philip the Chancellor on Transcendentals

A. L. Komáromi5 Comments

Philip the Chancellor (1160?-1236 AD) in the work Summa de bono introduces a theory of transcendentals, according to which:

  • transcendentals are properties to be found in all and every thing: being, unity, good, truth
  • they are convertible to each other, are coextensional meaning that “
  • whatever has being also has unity, truth, and goodness”,
  • the division of the transcendentals exists only in the human mind.

The following OntoUML diagram presents Philip the Chancellor’s model of the transcendentals:

Philip the Chancellor on transcendentals
ClassDescriptionRelations
PropertyPropertycharacterizes Category
CategoryAristotelian categories, like Genus, Species (see [1.3.2])
ThingA thing is an individual creature (otherwise particular).inherits from Category
Transcendental“Certain properties fall into none of Aristotle’s categories; rather they are properties of all of the things to which the categories are applicable. For this reason, these properties are said to “transcend” the categories [transcendentals]. inherits form Property
Being“The concept of being is fundamental in that the concepts of the other transcendentals presuppose it.”subkind of Transcendental; characterizes (each and every) Thing
Unity, Good, Truth“Although there is some variation in what is counted as a transcendental, the list generally included being, unity, truth, and goodness. Thus, everything that falls into any of Aristotle’s categories is a being, has a certain sort of unity, and is true and good to a certain extent.
Not only do these properties transcend the categories and as a result, apply to everything classified by the categories, but they are held to be convertible with each other as well. This could mean one of two things. The transcendentals could be coextensional, so that whatever has being also has unity, truth, and goodness. This leaves open the possibility that the transcendentals are separate and distinct from one another. The second option of the convertibility thesis involves a stronger claim, namely, the idea that the transcendentals differ from one another only in concept, not in reality. Unity, truth, and goodness add nothing to a particular being over and above what is already there; everything that is a being is also one, true, and good in virtue of the very same characteristics. […] The various transcendentals do not differ in reality, only in concept. The concept of being is fundamental in that the concepts of the other transcendentals presuppose it. However, the concepts of all of the other transcendentals add a certain basic notion to the notion of being in order to differentiate them from being (see Aertsen 2012, MacDonald 1992). This basic notion is the notion of being that is undivided. Because this is a purely negative notion, it picks out no additional property in reality. The addition of indivision alone yields the concept of unity. To derive the concepts of the true and the good, one adds further the notion of the appropriate cause. The concept of truth involves the idea of the formal cause, that is, the cause in virtue of which matter is enformed, and a thing becomes what it is. Things are true, that is, genuine instances of the kind of thing they are to the extent that they instantiate the form of things of that kind. Thus, the concept of truth is the concept of being that is undivided from a formal cause. Goodness, on the other hand, has to do with being that is undivided from a final cause, that is, a cause that has to do with goals or ends, especially those goals that have been brought to fulfillment. Everything has a particular nature, that is, properties that make that thing a thing of that type. But things can exemplify those properties to a greater or lesser extent. Philip claims that everything has as its goal its own perfection, which means that things move toward exemplifying their specifying characteristics to the greatest extent possible. To the extent that a thing does so, that thing will be good. But that thing will also have being to the same extent. Thus, goodness and being in a given thing coincide in reality, and a thing’s goodness adds nothing over and above the thing’s being. But of course, goodness and being involve two different concepts. Thus, being and goodness have the same extension while differing intensionally. […]
Philip adopts the second notion of convertibility. The various transcendentals do not differ in reality, only in concept. The concept of being is fundamental in that the concepts of the other transcendentals presuppose it.“		subkind of Transcendental; characterizes Being

Sources

  • All citations from: McCluskey, Colleen, “Philip the Chancellor”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

First published: 23/7/2020
Updated: 29/3/2021
Updated: 30/1/2022