Folia Theologica 12. (2001)

Tibor Rászlai: Aquinas ont the Infallibilty of the Intellect

THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE INTELLECT

127

that in which the latter is. According to the weaker reading of veracity sketched above, the FOI is veracious because it does not concern the relationship between thought and its objects in the world, but simply its own ideas. Thus, on this reading, the veracity of the intellect is due to the privileged accès a subject has to her own ideas. As we move to sense perception, then, we would expect Thomas to focus upon claims whose truth do not depend upon the object of sense, but upon the subject's own internal sensings, to which she has a privileged access. Candidates for such claims would be those like the one expressed by the Chisholmian. "I am appeared redly to."14 This claim is incorrigible because whether it is true depends only upon internal factors, not upon external objects of visual perception.

When we look at Thomas's arguments, however, we find says something quite different. The argument is essentially the same in the commentary on the De Anima and in the Summa, but more fully presented in the latter work. There Thomas writes:

"The senses are not deceived about their proper objects. For example, sight is not deceived concerning cloir - except when, as may happen, in an incidental way there is an impediment of the organ; as, for instance, in the case of feverish persons, the sense of taste judges sweet things to be bitter, because of the fact that the tongue is filled with bad humors."15

Clearly, the veracity here cannot be because the reports in question are only of subjective seemings; these reports are just as true for someone with a fever, but Thomas says his perception of taste is not veracious. The veracity here is with respect to the proper object; in the case of sight, these are the colors of things in the visual field. Sight is veracious in the sense that by it, given that organ is healthy and that there is sufficient light, one perceives the actual colors of things, sight's proper object.

In support of this claim, Aquinas offers a general argument that applies not only to sense perception, but to any cognitive potency:

14 Roderick CHISHOLM: Theory of Knowledge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966, 34.

15 ST I., q. 85., a. 6. e