Reviews

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent by Nicholas Lash, John Henry Newman

matthewb's review against another edition

5.0

Any review of this book is going to be deficient in some way. Bernard Lonergan allegedly read it 20 times before venturing his opinion. Having only read it once, this is necessarily an incomplete summary of the book’s richness and density.

The word “Essay” is a rather modest description of a book which runs to 320 pages in my copy and based on the page number references in the Notes at the end would have had about 490 pages in the first edition layout. I would call it a Treatise, not only on Assent but on Inference, the examination of which takes up a good portion of the work. I assume Newman had his reasons for naming it as he did.

His writing style is exquisite - Victorian English flowing lavishly from his pen, wrapping itself around each new idea expressed, probing every facet of the points put forth in a way that is both painstakingly meticulous and beautiful. It is a slow read, both because the ideas need careful consideration and the language needs to be savoured.

The work is divided into two parts: the first deals with Assent and Apprehension and the second with Assent and Inference. Here is a brief (and necessarily inadequate) summary of the main points:

Assent and Apprehension:

Chapter 1: Modes of Holding and Apprehending Propositions

• Newman starts by drawing distinctions. There are three ways of enunciating and holding propositions: i) a proposition enunciated as a Question and held by an act of Doubt; ii) a proposition enunciated as a Conclusion and held by an act of Inference; iii) a proposition enunciated as an Assertion and held by an act of Assent. These three distinct modes are entirely independent. To disbelieve (or dissent) is to assent to the contrary of a proposition.



• Newman focuses on Assent and Inference. Assent is unconditional, Inference is conditional, as it implies the assumption of premisses.



• Propositions can be divided into notional propositions (terms that are “abstract, general, and non-existing”, e.g. Man is an animal) and real propositions (terms that are “external to us, unit and individual”, e.g. the earth goes round the sun). Similarly these propositions can be apprehended with either notional or real apprehension and assented to with either notional or real assent.

Chapter 2: Assent Considered as Apprehensive

• The act of Assent itself is unconditional, but presupposes the condition of a previous inference in favour of the proposition and an apprehension of its terms.



• “Yet there is a way, in which the child can give an indirect assent even to a proposition, in which he understood neither subject nor predicate. He cannot indeed in that case assent to the proposition itself, but he can assent to its truth.” i.e. he can only assert proposition X, but he can assent to the proposition “X is True”, “for here is a predicate which he sufficiently apprehends, what is inapprehensible in the proposition being confined to the subject.”



• Assent is complete and absolute, but can have a greater or lesser force depending on the quality of the apprehension of the terms.

Chapter 3: The Apprehension of Propositions

• Real apprehension - any information presented to us through our bodily senses, or our mental sensations. By “mental sensations” he means memory, which “has to do with individual things and nothing that is not individual”, and an inventive faculty that allows us to compose new images based on descriptions, though we had never experienced the composition with our five senses.



• Notional apprehension - general concepts as abstracted from individual things. This can occur even in the recounting of an event or description of a thing, where the words only convey general notions, as in stereotypes for example.



• Real apprehension can lead to a keener assent than a notional apprehension, but Newman insists that Assent in itself is absolute and not affected by the character of the associated Apprehension.

Chapter 4: Notional and Real Assent

• Notional Assents come in five types:
  
  • Profession: very feeble and superficial; little more than assertions
  
  
  • Credence: things we take for granted and have no doubt about
  
  
  • Opinion: deliberate assent independent of premisses, to a proposition as probably true
  
  
  • Presumption: assent to first principles of a line of reasoning, (specifically, that all things are caused by an effective will)
  
  
  • Speculation: the contemplation of mental operations and their results, as in mathematical investigations or legal judgments.



• Real Assent is directed towards individual things. Notional Assent can be converted to Real Assent by application of the general to the particular.



• Assent, in itself, does not lead to action, but Real Assent can affect our conduct while Notional Assent does not.

Chapter 5: Apprehension and Assent In the Matter of Religion

• To give a Real Assent to a dogma is an act of religion; to give a notional assent is an act of theology.



• Conscience informs our likes/dislikes of someone’s actions; Taste informs our likes/dislikes of someone’s clothes, for example.



• “Conscience is a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator; and the firmest hold of theological truths is gained by habits of personal religion.”



• Example of the Trinity - nine propositions. Can be assented to notionally (theology) all together, but can be assented to really (religion) when taken individually.



• A Catholic is bound to give a real assent that what the Catholic Church teaches is true, “including all particular assents, notional and real”, “progressing from one apprehension of it to another according to his opportunities of doing so.”

Assent and Inference
Chapter 6: Assent Considered As Unconditional

• Paradox: Assent follows on inference, yet inference is conditional on premisses while assent is unconditional.



• Simple Assent: Contra Locke, assent is always absolute and never partial. Locke correlates assent with inference, but Newman considers them entirely distinct.



• Complex Assent: An assent may be held without simultaneous recognition of the grounds for the assent, but then after further acts of inference the assent may be renewed or reinforced - a reflexive assent to a previous assent, e.g. Great Britain is an island.

Chapter 7: Certitude

• Simple Assent is material or interpretative certitude - simple, unexamined act based for example on authority; Complex (Reflex) Assent is true Certitude, an assent to the notional proposition that the simple assent is true.



• “Assents may and do change; certitudes endure. This is why religion demands more than an assent to its truth; it requires a certitude, or at least an assent which is convertible into certitude on demand.”



• Certitude is directed at individual propositions and does not imply acts of infallibility.



• “Certitude is a deliberate assent given expressly after reasoning. If then my certitude is unfounded, it is the reasoning that is in fault, not my assent to it… Errors in reasoning are lessons and warnings, not to give up reasoning, but to reason with greater caution.”



• Certitude is indefectible, but it is not always obvious what the underlying proposition held with certitude is. Conclusions are often derived from prejudices and probabilities, which are subject to change; nevertheless the underlying certitude, if it be certitude, remains unchanged, e.g. when people convert religions.

Chapter 8: Inference

• Formal inference: a line of reasoning that can be reduced to symbols, e.g. geometry, algebra, calculus, logical syllogisms etc



• Verbal argumentation, or logic applied to concrete things, is “loose at both ends”. Inference is best suited to notions, but casting a real object to a notional proposition requires assuming first principles which may be disputed. Similarly, the conclusion of an inference is notional, and when applied to a concrete thing introduces probability, as every individual thing has its own nature that can at best be approximated by notions.



• Informal inference: a cumulation of such independent probabilities that leads to certitude in concrete matters. It doesn’t supersede formal inference, but deals with real things instead of abstract; it is implicit, not deliberate or directed; it is still conditional on the premisses of all the constituent probabilities. e.g. Great Britain is an island, I will die one day, etc. (Worth re-reading this section for the examples).



• Natural inference: the most natural mode of reasoning is not from proposition to proposition but a divination of things all at once. The ratiocinative faculty is actually a collection of analogous faculties, each with its own province. In individuals some may be united, leading to extraordinary competences, e.g. in strategy, mathematics, art etc.

Chapter 9: The Illative Sense

• Inferring from experience leads only to probabilities, so how can anything be known for certain? Via the Illative Sense, the perfection of the ratiocinative faculty.



• “Certitude is a mental state; certainty is a quality of propositions.”



• We are compelled to approach the search for knowledge from our human condition, thinking, reflecting, judging - “there is no ultimate test of truth besides the testimony born to truth by the mind itself”. It is God who teaches us all things through our nature, varying according to the subject matter.



• The Illative Sense is analogous to Aristotle’s phronesis - directing the mind in matters of morality, taste, etc. Indeed every virtue or talent has its own proper phronesis.



• The exercise of the illative sense is the same always - reasoning proceeds always as far as possible by the logic of language and supplemented by the more “elastic logic of thought”.



• The illative sense is attached to definite subject matters - may be more perfected in one department than another.



• There is no ultimate test of truth and error in our inferences besides the trustworthiness of the Illative Sense that gives them its sanction.



• The exercise of the illative sense can lead to varying and often contradictory conclusions, depending on the first principles applied to a problem, which vary among interlocutors.

Chapter 10: Inference and Assent in the Matter of Religion

• In religious inquiry everyone speaks for himself - what strikes another as true will inform their own personal quest.



• Christianity is an addition to natural religion and does not supersede or contradict it.



• Three channels of natural religion: the mind (Conscience), the voice of mankind (the universal experience of man’s insufficiency and sinfulness in the most primitive societies) and the course of the world (commonalities of religious expression in different societies throughout history in response to the evils of the world brought about by man’s fallenness).