Miguel ESPINOZA

A THEORY OF INTELLIGIBILITY
English version of the First Edition, Éditions Universitaires du Sud, Toulouse, 1994

Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

§ 1. — Main theses

The aim of this book is to show the value of a metaphysics that is both realist and
naturalist. Realist, because it is maintained that there is a knowable reality, and naturalist for
two reasons closely related: first, because it is asserted that the objective of science, extended by
a rationalist metaphysics, is to apprehend the intelligibility of nature; second, because in order
to do this, it is proposed that man, his behaviour, his thought, be traced back to their natural
sources.
This realist and naturalist metaphysics is an option different from all sorts of idealism,
and it differs also from other realisms or quasi-realisms such as naive realism, scientific realism,
internalism, probabilism or fallibilism, and the veiled-reality thesis.

This theory is the development of the following theses:

— Proposition 1: Nature is composed of emergent systems.

— Proposition 2: Natural systems are discrete entities which come out of a continuous
substrate space. This continuous substrate space accounts, in the last analysis, for the continuity
of nature and the possibility of obtaining a step by step explanation.
— Proposition 3: Natural systems are intrinsically intelligible. Reason, meaning, and truth
are intrinsic properties of natural systems. These properties exist in things before existing
consciously in our minds.
 A Theory of Intelligibility, Introduction 2

— Proposition 4: The intrinsic intelligibility of a system is due to (i) its stability, (ii) the
necessity or reason inscribed in it, (iii) the presence of universal aspects or elements, and (iv)
the fact that the system has a logos, a principle which organizes its unity.
— Proposition 5: The intellect is an emergent natural system whose function is the
conscious apprehension of natural intelligibility.
— Proposition 6: Knowledge and understanding are the conscious apprehension of
natural intelligibility, even if the intelligibility in things is not exactly the same as the
intelligibility in the intellect.
— Proposition 7: Knowledge rationally extended by understanding should be expressed
in a scientific-metaphysical system.
— Proposition 8: The aim of science-cum-metaphysics is the search for intelligibility.
— Proposition 9: To explain is to climb up the ladder of necessity.

Man is a real, natural being, so the knowledge of man is knowledge of reality in-itself.
Reality is not an unknowable noumenon, what exists exclusively beyond man, beyond our
sense impressions; reality is not a particular zone within nature. If we think of sense impression
as a wall, then what is on this side of impression is as real as what is on the other side. What is
not real is not equivalent to what goes on within man, but what exists only intentionally, within
our systems of symbols.
Realism places things in order: at the beginning there is nature which produces man; then
come sensation, perception, and motivity which condition the appearance of language,
concepts, and thoughts. The typical error of idealism consists in taking things by the other end.
An extreme version of this tendency is encapsulated in Schelling's sentence: "to philosophize
on nature means to create nature." Idealists reason as if the main function of sensation,
perception, and thinking, were not to provide to animals and men better ways to adapt
themselves to their environment. Knowledge exists in order to live.
For the Greek pre-Socratic thinkers and for Aristotle, 'nature' (physis) is linked to a series
of processes such as producing, growing, generating, and forming. Nature was the universal
mother, the source of being, the principle of birth, the principle of movement, the great system
of causes. "Nature is her own standard ― says Santayana, commenting Lucretius' philosophy
― and if she seems to us unnatural, there is no hope for our minds."
A natural being has in itself the force of the movement by means of which it develops to
become what it has to become. Nature is the basic reality, the fundamental substance of
everything. Nature is also the ordered set of natural bodies or phenomena, everything there is.
The concept of nature is multivocal, and this multivocity is kept in this book. That is why
sometimes I use 'nature', 'substance', 'reality' or 'universe' indistinctly; some other times the
context demands that a distinction be made.
Modern thinkers had a less substantialist concept of nature. For them, its basic context
was the expression 'natural law', which reflects a major change of ontology: from substance to
functional relations. To the extent that substance became matter, and to the extent that matter
was reduced to the interaction of particles, nature was opposed to mind and to everything
 A Theory of Intelligibility, Introduction 3

modern thinkers associated to mind: intelligence, teleology, etc. This essay is also an argument
against such abrupt matter-mind demarcation. Neither matter nor mind are substances,
independent or autonomous realities. It is only in an erroneous, provocative way, and by an
abuse of language, that some people speak of a second, third, and even of a fourth world. The
ancient concept of nature, linked to the pre-Socratic and Aristotelian tradition, lends itself
better than any other sense to recover the matter-mind continuity .
The concept of metaphysics is multivocal. I do not understand it as a mode of expression
(as a work of art can be), nor as an irrational attempt to go beyond nature. I understand
metaphysics as the rational antecedent and extension of what we can learn through sense
experience. It is the search for general principles and ideas rationally obtained which give the
ultimate meaning to regularities and laws. No analysis can possibly exist without metaphysics.
Metaphysics and epistemology are kept apart as much as possible, although occasionally
the problems treated force us to resort to both of them. Epistemology is a very modest
discipline both in nature and reach. Its origin is negative: it has come out of the suspicion
concerning the capacity of thought to know things as they are. That is why it unceasingly
demands the stating of criteria, rules, norms and warrants for having the right to build up
theories, or even more radically, to assert anything. Epistemology has an idealist origin, and the
carrying out of a realist epistemological program implies, sooner or later, to set fire to its own
ranks.
It is a well known fact that more than a century ago, metaphysics and science began living
separate lives. This divorce has damaged both of them: contemporary science has become so
positivistic and pragmatic, that metaphysics ― the search for intelligibility ― is now more
necessary than ever. On the other hand, since more than a century now, metaphysicians have
been incapable of taking a profit from the progress of knowledge, from the contact with reality
and the means to deepen and sharpen concepts offered by science. Among the essentials of
this theory is the expression of the need to recover the ties between science and metaphysics.
By the way, it is a mystery to me how somebody can be satisfied or even proud of being
a pragmatist or a positivist once he fully realizes that to be pragmatic means to act without
knowing and a fortiori without understanding, and that to be a positivist means to know without
understanding. It is as if men did not want to assume their humanity.
My intention is to be more constructive than critical. Contrary to what is shown by the
present literature of professional philosophers, I do not think that the main talents of the
philosopher should be those of the lawyer or rhetorician. (Anyway, like a sports record, an
argument bears in it the invitation to be broken). The philosopher has a chance of
accomplishing his task if he is capable of constructing a system where the place (the meaning)
of concepts and propositions representing reality is clearly seen.
As for the subtitle, 'Principles of realist metaphysics': this theory sketches the active,
natural sources which ultimately explain phenomena. 'Principle' is used in a realist sense, it is
an active power as substance and cause. 'Principle' does not mean here axiom or basic
proposition established dogmatically a priori. The realism I propose is not scientific but
metaphysical, and metaphysical does not mean ultra-physical: I conceive the metaphysical as an
 A Theory of Intelligibility, Introduction 4

aspect, dimension, or moment of the physical world, and I often (not exclusively) use 'physical'
in the ancient sense meaning 'real'. Accordingly, the biological and the psychic are also physical
realities. For instance, the sensation of colour, or, for that matter, of any secondary quality, is a
physical phenomenon.

§ 2. — The order of chapters

Chapter II "The four causes", is a privileged place to review systematically most of the
major properties of an up-to-date version of realist metaphysics. The lesson to be retained is
that Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes, clarified and extended by scientific and
mathematical progress, is more apt than contemporary reductionisms to satisfy the quest for
intelligibility.
One of the main scientific-metaphysical categories of explanation is the idea of force,
interesting because it has been considered as the main property, or as one of the main
properties, of ultimate reality. Let us notice — and this is important for a realist metaphysics —
that despite the fact that force is an unobservable — we see only its effects —, it does have an
explanatory value. These ideas are the content of Chapter III "Force and intelligibility", the
occasion to evoke and discuss some of the main problems of metaphysics.
The first chapters have dealt with some of the main categories of mechanisms: causality,
matter, force, and mathematics. The main idea of Chapter IV "Mechanism as the metaphysical
skeleton of science", is that the intuitions inspiring the mechanical approach to nature are
correct: mathematics is the most appropriate language for the development of knowledge
because nature is mathematically organized; causality is satisfactory because it shows that what
happens, happens out of necessity. Classical mechanism can be extended by the recognition of
systems aspiring to form and finality, processes which become gradually describable by
mathematics.
The influence that science may have on philosophy has been illustrated recently by
Richard Feynman's sentence "nature is unintelligible" — which is in contradiction with the main
thesis of this book. In order to struggle against such an idea and against its disastrous
consequences for science and philosophy, it is necessary to review at least some of the
properties of contemporary science: such is the subject-matter of Chapter V "On
experimentalism". Science is here criticized from the point of view of understanding. The
intent here is to review the philosophical presuppositions of a science whose aim is to save
phenomena, and, in passing, we pave the way for a different conception of the role of science
and its relation to metaphysics.
It is my conviction that the only full-fledged realism is metaphysical realism. It follows
that the other forms of realism such as the realism of common sense or scientific realism,
naturally tend to metaphysical realism. This is the main guiding idea of Chapter VI "Scientific
realism: a truncated metaphysics".
In the previous chapters the assertion is made that science and metaphysics can form one
system, that despite the way it is practised nowadays, science can have the same objective as
 A Theory of Intelligibility, Introduction 5

metaphysics: to apprehend nature's intelligibility. Chapter VII "Scientific and metaphysical

aspects of intelligibility", pulls together and organizes the suggestions made in that sense. I try to
show how our understanding can progress continuously from the physical to the metaphysical.
I propose a rich conception of meaning, a prerequisite for conceiving metaphysics as a rational
antecedent or extension of science.
Chapter VIII "Is reality veiled?" is a discussion of some contemporary versions of the
doctrine that we cannot know reality-in-itself because everything we get to know is perception-
dependent or language-dependent. Granting that we cannot neatly put man on one side, extra-
human nature on the other, it is concluded that we can nevertheless unveil reality by
considering the origin of perception and language from a natural point of view.
No realism can be accomplished without the belief in an ultimate and knowable reality.
What would be the interest of science and philosophy if it could be proved that mankind
cannot transcend itself, that the search for reality is vain endeavour? Scepticism and relativism
can hardly have a motivational value. The main thesis of Chapter IX, "The ultimate natural
category" (which is, in a way, a summary and a conclusion), is that substance is the ultimate
natural category, a condition of possibility of the philosophy of nature and of a scientific-
metaphysical system devoted to the search for intelligibility. Without substance and causality
nature would not contain in itself the principles for its own interpretation and intelligibility
would not be an intrinsic property of nature. Those who deny this are led to transform, more
or less consciously, phenomena or relations into substance and end up by thinking,
idealistically, that intelligibility is a gift man gives to nature.

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