Thomistic Theory of Knowledge: a Brief Introduction

Thomas’s theory of knowledge is an identity theory, not a representational theory. By representational theory, I mean a theory whereby our ideas are that which we are in cognitive contact with and that these ideas are presumed to represent some reality beyond our mind. By contrast, Thomas’s theory is one of direct or unmediated realism. What we are in cognitive contact with are the objects themselves, and our ideas are simply that through which we make cognitive contact. Again: that which vs that through which.

In other words, we know by means of an idea (“expressed species”), but the idea itself is not what we know but that through which we know. What we know is the exterior object: it is “the what” existing mentally and immaterially. Ultimately, “the what” is a formal sign whose nature just is to make present in the knower what is other than the knower. For obvious reasons, Thomas’s theory would have advantages for avoiding the usual skeptical difficulties encountered in various representational theories of knowledge, where it seems difficult if not impossible to see how we ever get things right if all we have access to are representations and the not the real McCoy, as it were. Nevertheless, the Thomistic account has a problem of its own: it must account, not for how we get anything right, but how we get anything wrong.

For an answer to that, I recommend watching my conversation with Dr. Therese Cory.