Erisa Hysi Human Philosophy 1311 Sept 07th, 2015

In the 17th question, Article 2, Aquinas is trying to answer the questions related to Falsity, its existence, and the relation to the truth. The question in the second article is more specific if the falsity exist in the sense. The view that Aquinas takes is a different view than the one that sees falsity as in interpretation of our sense data rather in the sense data themselves. Aquinas see falsity exist in the sense only to the extent that truth exists in them too.
He says that falsity should be looked for in the senses only to the extent that the truth exists in them, so that we can only say that falsity exists in the senses when they apprehend things otherwise than they actually are. 1
The three ways that Aquinas identifies the likeness of a thing exist in the sense are; primarily and its own nature, secondly and its own nature, and accidentally.
The argument that Aquinas arise is that senses can operate in many more ways than simply the apprehension of primary sensation. He seems to be arguing that senses are capable of preprocessing primitive sense data before presented to the intellect. Falsity can exist in the sense only when the sense organ itself is not working properly as he stated in the article: “Hence, for instance, it happens that on account of an unhealthy tongue sweet seems bitter to a sick person” In this case the sense organ itself is not receiving the sensible form correctly.
Also, it can occur when the sense makes mistakes in the preprocessing time. As he previously indicated in the article: “…it follows that it (sense) sometimes report erroneously of that object, and thus we are deceived by sense about the object…”
An argument that Aquinas gives is that falsity does not exist in the sense, since sense itself is not deceived to its proper object. Thus falsity is proper