Aristotle: Perception

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study of perception, taking as its starting point a puzzle in Empedocles' theory of vision: if perception is a mode of material assimilation, how can we perceive colors at a distance? Kalderon argues that the theory of perception offered by Aristotle in answer to the puzzle is both attractive and defensible.

A reply to Todd Ganson’s “Was Aristotle a Naïve Realist”, a talk for a conference in Gothenburg Sweden 12-14 June 2015 entitled The Mechanisms of Sense Perception in Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition.

The subject of this essay is the classical problem of induction, which is sometimes attributed to David Hume and called “the Humean Problem of Induction.” Here, I examine a certain sort of Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem, which appeals to the concept of natural kinds in its response to the inductive skeptic. This position is most notably represented by Howard Sankey and Marc Lange. The purpose of this paper is partly destructive and partly constructive. I raise two questions. The first (...) is: Are the natural kind solutions to the problem successful? The first thesis of this paper is that they are not, and I will show how and why they fail. And the second question I raise here is: Is there nonetheless some alternative Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem which is successful and can overcome the shortcomings endemic to the Sankey-Lange account? The second thesis is that there is, and I’ll attempt to sketch one. My stance here may be summarized by saying that, while I agree with Sankey and Lange that the problem of induction can be adequately resolved, and while I am on the whole sympathetic with the Aristotelian spirit of their account, I am, for all that, dissatisfied with the letter of them. Nothing short of a more thoroughgoing Aristotelianism about the epistemology of induction will do. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

I argue that a study of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Parva Naturalia shows that Aristotle had a notion of attention. This notion captures the common aspects of apparently different phenomena like perceiving something vividly, being distracted by a loud sound or by a musical piece, focusing on a geometrical problem. For Aristotle, these phenomena involve a specific selectivity that is the outcome of the competition between different cognitive stimuli. This selectivity is attention. I argue that Aristotle studied the (...) common aspects of the physiological processes at the basis of attention and its connection with pleasure. His notion can explain perceptual attention and intellectual attention as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. In addition, it sheds light on how attention and enjoyment can enhance our cognitive activities. (shrink)

Aristotle is history’s most famous and influential proponent of the view that there are exactly five senses. But was he entitled to hold this view, given his other commitments? In particular, was he entitled to treat touch as a single sense, given the diversity of its correlated objects? In this paper I argue that Aristotle wished to individuate touch on the basis of its correlated objects, just as he had the other four senses. I also argue, contrary to what is (...) often supposed, that he was well-placed to do so, given his other commitments and views. (shrink)

This volume focuses on philosophical problems concerning sense perception in the history of philosophy. It consists of thirteen essays that analyse the philosophical tradition originating in Aristotle’s writings. Each essay tackles a particular problem that tests the limits of Aristotle’s theory of perception and develops it in new directions. The problems discussed range from simultaneous perception to causality in perception, from the representational nature of sense-objects to the role of conscious attention, and from the physical/mental divide to perception as quasi-rational (...) judgement. -/- The volume gives an equal footing to Greek, Arabic, and Latin philosophical traditions. It makes a substantial contribution not just to the study of the Aristotelian analysis of sense perception, but to its reception in the commentary tradition and beyond. Thus, the papers address developments in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Avicenna, John of Jandun, Nicole Oresme, and Sayf al-Din al-Amidi, among others. The result of this is a coherent collection that attacks a well-defined topic from a wide range of perspectives and across philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Aristotle’s works on natural science show that he was aware of the affective powers of colour. At De an. 421a13, for example, he writes that hard-eyed animals can only discriminate between frightening and non-frightening colours. In the Nicomachean Ethics, furthermore, colours are the source of pleasures and delight. These pleasures, unlike the pleasures of touch and taste, neither corrupt us nor make us wiser. Aristotle’s views on the affective powers of colours raise a question about the limits he seems to (...) place on the affective powers of pictures at De an. 427b15-24, where he implies that pictures do not affect us immediately. In this paper, I examine the contrast between the affective powers of colour and the affective powers of pictures. I argue that colours can give rise to pleasure and pain in themselves and generate emotions incidentally. Similarly, pictures can please us or affect us in themselves and incidentally. In light of this account, I suggest that, on a plausible reading of De an. 427b15-24, the affective powers of pictures as mimetic objects are not immediate because they require an intervening cause in order to be effective. The representations of pictures and statues affect us either with the mediation of deception or with the mediation of interpretation. (shrink)

Alexander of Aphrodisias picks up Aristotle’s insufficient treatment of simultaneous perception and develops an adequate solution for the problem, thereby offering an account of the unity of perceptual consciousness—the single mental activity of a single subject with complex content. I show the adequacy of the solution by using as criteria the requirements that have been identified by Aristotle and approved (and explained) by Alexander. I analyze Alexander’s solution in two turns. First, with respect to heterogeneous perceptibles, Alexander adopts and reformulates (...) Aristotle’s metaphorical account invoking the analogy with a point. Second, with respect to homogeneous opposites, accordingly, perception is judgement, but it involves physical changes in diverse parts of the primary sense-organ. By this account Alexander resolves the issue of the unity of the subject on the level of the capacity of the soul, and coordinates the complexity of content with the complexity on the physical level. In addition to being adequate, the solution is faithful to Aristotle. I suggest that the interpretative decisions Alexander makes (the clarification of the analogy; the reference he finds to the analogy; the two components of the solution, judgement and parts of the organ) form an ingenious extension of Aristotle’s treatment. Interestingly, even though many elements in Alexander’s interpretation are taken up by modern commentators, no one has followed it in its entirety, nor even treated it in its own right. (shrink)

In this ambitious first book, Erick Raphael Jiménez argues that a good model for understanding Aristotle’s concept of mind (nous) lies in Aristotle’s account of the perception of time. This “time-perception model” of mind and its activity, thinking, bridges a gap between Jiménez’s unorthodox readings of Aristotelian mind and its objects. The book will attract the interest of specialists in Aristotle’s psychology, as well as other scholars interested in Aristotle’s concept of mind and its influence, for instance, theologians interested in (...) Aristotle’s tantalizing discussion of active or maker mind in De Anima 3.5 (DA). (shrink)

For Aristotle, human cognition has a lot in common both with non-human animal cognition and with divine cognition. With non-human animals, humans share a non-rational part of the soul and non-rational cognitive faculties (DA 427b6–14, NE 1102b29 and EE 1219b24–6). With gods, humans share a rational part of the soul and rational cognitive faculties (NE 1177b17– 1178a8). The rational part and the non-rational part of the soul, however, coexist and cooperate only in human souls (NE 1102b26–9, EE 1219b28–31). In this (...) chapter, I show that a study of this cooperation helps to uncover some distinctive aspects of human cognition and desire. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the resources Thomas Aquinas provides for enquiries concerning the psychological abilities of nonhuman animals. I first look to Aquinas’s account of divine, angelic, human, and nonhuman animal naming, to help us articulate the contours of a ‘critical anthropocentrism’ that aims to steer clear of the mistakes of a na¨ıve anthropocentrism and misconceived avowals to entirely eschew anthropocentrism. I then address the need for our critical anthropocentrism both to reject the mental-physical dichotomy endorsed by ‘folk psychology’ (...) and to articulate a more adequate ‘commonsense psychology’ that acknowledges most embodied animal behavior is observable psychological behavior. Next, I argue that we can develop Aquinas’s doctrine of estimation and conation to formulate an account of nonhuman animal action that more adequately characterizes the purposeful behaviors of nonhuman animals. To do so, we first need to recognize a wider range of nonhuman animal behaviors that are captured by Aquinas’s ‘estimative sense’, and that all of these behaviors are specified by a finite variety of particular goods confined to the animals’ environmental niches. But we also need to supplement Aquinas’s account of human and nonhuman animal agency by exploring the ontogeny and ecology of how humans and other animals become attuned to affordances within these different environmental niches. I argue that we should look to Aquinas’s account of nonhuman animal capacities in ST I-II 6-17 for subtle insights that can expand our understanding of how nonhuman animals engage in purposeful behavior by exercising analogous nonrational and imperfectly voluntary forms of intention, deliberation, choice, execution, and enjoyment. I conclude with an outline for how future enquiry can seek to explain the nonrational purposeful problem-solving competencies of chimps, canines, corvids, cetaceans, cephalopods, and other nonhuman animal species. (shrink)

In the De Anima, Aristotle claims that the five senses are infallible about their proper objects. I contend that this claim means that sight is infallible about its proper object in its most specific form, i. e. sight is infallible about red or green and not merely about color in general. This robust claim is justified by Aristotle’s teleological principle that nature does nothing in vain. Additionally, drawing on Aristotle’s comparison of perception and one’s understanding of the essences, I defend (...) a conception of the senses in which the structure of their contents is simple rather than predicative and show how this coheres better with the rest of my interpretation. (shrink)

Aristotle held that perception consists in the reception of external sensory qualities (or sensible forms) in the sensorium. This idea is repeated in many forms in contemporary philosophy, including, with regard to vision, in the idea (still not firmly rejected) that the retinal image consists of points of colour. In fact, this is false. Colour is a quality that is constructed by the visual system, and though it is possible to be a realist about colour, it is completely misleading to (...) think of it as received by the retina. Moreover, such supposedly “charitable” interpretations of Aristotle’s doctrines, based on miscon- ceptions of perception-science, distort our understanding of his historical context. (shrink)

Aristotle recognizes two modes of apprehending time, viz., perceiving time and grasping time intellectually. This chapter clarifies what is and is not involved in these two modes of apprehending time. It also clarifies the way in which they interact, and argues that, according to Aristotle, one’s intellectual grasp of time has an effect on one’s perception of time for those beings who have intellect.

In De Anima I 4, Aristotle describes the intellect (nous) as a sort of substance, separate and incorruptible. Myles Burnyeat and Lloyd Gerson take this as proof that, for Aristotle, the intellect is a separate eternal entity, not a power belonging to individual humans. Against this reading, I show that this passage does not express Aristotle’s own views, but dialectically examines a reputable position (endoxon) about the intellect that seems to show that it can be subject to change. The passage’s (...) argument for the indestructibility of intellect via an analogy to perception does not fit with Aristotle’s own views. Aristotle thinks that perception operates via bodily organs, but denies this of understanding. He also requires separability from the body for indestructibility, something this analogy rules out. However, Aristotle’s Platonist interlocutors may well endorse such an argument. My dialectical interpretation best resolves the interpretative difficulties and explains its place in the larger context, Aristotle’s discussion of Platonist views on the soul. Aristotle presents a challenge to his insistence that the soul is subject to change, dialectically resolves that challenge, and then ends by reserving the right to give a different account of the intellect. (shrink)

This is an excellent translation of Aristotle's De Anima or On the Soul, part of C.D.C. Reeve's impressive ongoing project of translating Aristotle's works for the New Hackett Aristotle. Reeve's translation is careful and accurate, committed to faithfully rendering Aristotle into English while making him as readable as possible. This edition features excellent notes that will greatly assist readers (especially in their inclusion of related passages that illuminate the sections they annotate) and an introduction that situates the work within Aristotle's (...) scientific method and his overall view of reality. (shrink)

This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person’s immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the brain, but should maintain, with Aquinas, that (...) noetic operations directly interact with psychosomatic operations. I develop a Thomist account of noetic–psychosomatic interactions that expands upon the first part’s rapprochement between the new mechanist philosophy of neuroscience and psychology and hylomorphic animalism. I argue that noetic–psychosomatic interactions are best understood as analogous to the way diverse higher and lower order psychosomatic powers interact by actualizing, coordinating, and directing the operations of other psychosomatic powers. I draw on James Ross’s arguments for the immateriality of intellectual operations as realizing definite pure functions in order to elucidate the way noetic operations uniquely actualize, coordinate, and direct the psychosomatic operations they interact with. I conclude with a conjectural sketch of how this presentation of Thomist philosophical anthropology understands the noetic and psychosomatic deficits brought about by damage to the nervous system. (shrink)

A puzzle about the presentation of objects located at a distance is seen to animate Aristotle's account of transparency in De Anima and De Sensu.

Recently, a strong hylomorphic reading of Aristotelian emotions has been put forward, one that allegedly eliminates the problem of causal interaction between soul and body. Taking the presentation of emotions in de An. I 1 as a starting point and basic thread, but relying also on the discussion of Rh. II, I will argue that this reading only takes into account two of the four causes of emotions, and that, if all four of them are included into the picture, then (...) a causal interaction of mind and body remains within Aristotelian emotions, independent of how strongly their hylomorphism is understood. Beyond the discussion with this recent reading, the analysis proposed of the fourfold causal structure of emotions is also intended as a hermeneutical starting point for a comprehensive analysis of particular emotions in Aristotle. Through the different causes Aristotle seems to account for many aspects of the complex phenomenon of emotion, including its physiological causes, its mental causes, and its intentional object. (shrink)

As we now know, most, if not all, philosophers in the High Middle Ages agreed that what we immediately perceive are external objects and that the immediate object of perception must not be some image present to the mind. Yet most — but not all — philosophers in the High Middle Ages also held, following Aristotle, that perception is a process wherein the percipient takes on the likeness of the external object. This likeness — called a species — is a (...) representation (of some sort) by means of which we immediately perceive external objects. But how can perception be at once direct — or immediate — and at the same time by way of representations? The usual answer here was that the species represents the external object to some percipient even though the species itself is not at all perceived: the species is that by which I perceive and not that which I perceive. John Buridan defends this traditional view — call it direct realism with representations. However, just a couple of decades before Buridan, one of the more important philosophers at Paris, Durand of St.-Pourçain, had already rejected direct realism with representation. Durand defends what I will call direct realism without representations. On his view, a species is not at all necessary during overtly direct forms of perception, neither as cause nor as representation. This paper has two parts. In the first part, I will discuss some of the more interesting arguments that Durand makes against direct realism with representations. In the second part, I will look at Buridan's defense of the view. -/- . (shrink)

Sense experience, naïvely conceived, is a way of knowing perceptible properties: the colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures in our perceptual environment. So conceived, ordinary experience presents the perceiver with the essential nature of a property like Sky Blue or Middle C, such that how the property appears in experience is identical to how it essentially is. In antiquity, as today, it was controversial whether sense experience could meet the conditions for knowledge implicit in this naïve conception. Aristotle was a (...) partisan in this debate, but his position is poorly understood. This dissertation examines how Aristotle’s perceptual psychology responds to ancient challenges to the naïve conception, and so articulates his defense of perceptual knowledge. -/- Aristotle’s defense relies on an ontology of “perceptual qualities"—a core class of perceptible properties—according to which those qualities, despite having a perceiver-independent essence rooted in the physics of causation and affection, nevertheless can be present in experience as they essentially are. Chapter 1 defends this realist and objectivist reading against competing interpretations, which overlook a crucial distinction between perceptual qualities and perceptual objects. Chapter 2 presents Aristotle’s ontology as a physicalism that uncharacteristically allows for perceptual qualities to appear in experience as they essentially are. -/- This ontology informs Aristotle’s account of the psychological conditions under which perceivers actually are presented with the essence of perceptual qualities. The locus of this account is an obscure passage where Aristotle purports to show that the senses “discriminate” perceptual qualities because the senses are “mean states” (An. 2.11, 424a5–7). Chapter 3 develops a comprehensive interpretation of the sensory mean state, which Chapter 4 uses to elucidate Aristotle’s argument for sensory discrimination. Sensory discrimination turns out to be a process in which the essence of a perceptual quality comes to be present in the affection it produces in a perceiver. For Aristotle, this shows that sense perception meets a condition for knowledge that his predecessors, including Plato, thought it could not meet. For in his view, but not in theirs, sense experience shares in both the truth and the essence of the qualities it perceives. (shrink)

I examine the passages where Aristotle maintains that intellectual activity employs φαντάσματα (images) and argue that he requires awareness of the relevant images. This, together with Aristotle’s claims about the universality of understanding, gives us reason to reject the interpretation of Michael Wedin and Victor Caston, on which φαντάσματα serve as the material basis for thinking. I develop a new interpretation by unpacking the comparison Aristotle makes to the role of diagrams in doing geometry. In theoretical understanding of mathematical and (...) natural beings, we usually need to employ appropriate φαντάσματα in order to grasp explanatory connections. Aristotle does not, however, commit himself to thinking that images are required for exercising all theoretical understanding. Understanding immaterial things, in particular, may not involve employing phantasmata. Thus the connection that Aristotle makes between images and understanding does not rule out the possibility that human intellectual activity could occur apart from the body. (shrink)

Is life a simple result of a conjunction of physico-chemical processes? Can be reduced to a mere juxtaposition of spatially determined events? What epistemology or world-view allows us to comprehend it? Aristotle built a novel philosophical system in which nature is a dynamical totality which is in constant movement. Life is a manifestation of it, and is formed and governed by the psyche. Psyche is the organizational principle of the different biological levels: nutritive, perceptive and intelective. Driesch's crucial experiment provided (...) empirical proof of the principle of life, which he called entelechy. Entelechy is an intensive manifoldness and cannot be comprehended by the usual extensive parameters. The entelechian's own ambiance is duration. This allows the reintroduction of the concept of teleology in the sphere of the living, understood not as a final cause, but as an order born from desire and leading to action. (shrink)

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error can help (...) to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

How many senses do humans possess? Five external senses, as most cultures have it—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste? Should proprioception, kinaesthesia, thirst, and pain be included, under the rubric bodily sense? What about the perception of time and the sense of number? Such questions reduce to two. 1. How do we distinguish a sense from other sorts of information-receiving faculties? 2. By what principle do we distinguish the senses? Aristotle discussed these questions in the De Anima. H. P. Grice (...) revived them in 1967. More recently, they have taken on fresh interest as a result of a collection of essays edited by Fiona Macpherson. This entry reviews some approaches to these questions and advances some new ideas for the reader’s consideration. It proposes that the senses constitute an integrated learning system, membership in which answers question 1. It also proposes that the modalities can be distinguished from one another in two ways, by the means of information pick-up and by the kinds of activity that a perceiver undertakes to make use of them. (shrink)

I reconstruct Aristotle’s reasons for thinking that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ. I present Aristotle’s account of the aboutness or intentionality of cognitive states, both perceptual and intellectual. On my interpretation, Aristotle’s account is based around the notion of cognitive powers taking on forms in a special preservative way. Based on this account, Aristotle argues that no physical structure could enable a bodily part or combination of bodily parts to produce or determine the full range of forms that (...) the human intellect can understand. For Aristotle, cognitive powers with bodily organs are always spatiotemporally limited, but the understanding is not. Aristotle claims that our understanding applies to all instances of the thing understood wherever and whenever they exist. On Aristotle’s own account the intellect in its nature is only “potential,” it does not actually possess any form. Thus nothing prevents it from possessing all forms. (shrink)

Kazimir Malevich’s style of Suprematist painting represents the inauguration of nothing less than a new form of culture premised upon a demolition of the Western tradition’s reifying habits of objective thought. In ridding his canvases of all objects and mimetic conventions, Malevich sought to reconfigure human perception in such a way as to open consciousness to alternative modes of organization and signification. In this paper, I argue that Malevich’s revolutionary aesthetic strategy can be illuminated by a return to the very (...) basis of this tradition, namely by a reconsideration of Aristotle’s account in De Anima III.2 of the initial possibility of objective perception as such. (shrink)

Most philosophers in the High Middle Ages agreed that what we immediately perceive are external objects. Yet most philosophers in the High Middle Ages also held, following Aristotle, that perception is a process wherein the perceiver takes on the form or likeness of the external object. This form or likeness — called a species — is a representation by means of which we immediately perceive the external object. Thomas Aquinas defended this thesis in one form, and Durand of St.-Pourçain, his (...) Dominican successor, rejects it. This paper explores Durand's novel criticism of Aquinas's species-theory of cognition. I first develop and defend a new interpretation of Durand's central criticism of Aquinas's theory of cognition. I close with some considerations about Durand's alternative to the theory. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I consider two related issues raised by Aristotle 's treatment of hearing and sounds. The first concerns the kinds of changes Aristotle takes to occur, in both perceptual medium and sense organs, when a perceiver hears a sounding object. The second issue concerns Aristotle 's views on the nature and location of the proper objects of auditory perception. I argue that Aristotle 's views on these topics are not what they have sometimes been taken to be, and (...) that when rightly understood they compare favourably in many respects with leading contemporary accounts. (shrink)

The image of a copy of Praxiteles’ Aphrodite—nude but demurely shielding her pubic region—which adorns the dust cover of Pearson’s superb monograph, Aristotle on Desire</i>), suggests to the casual book buyer that the volume encased therein will explain Aristotle’s thoughts about sexual desire—perhaps as a central part or the paradigm case of his general theory of desire. But the goddess likes being tricky: Aristotle has very little to say about sexual desire (at best it is a subcategory of <i>epithumia</i>, set (...) alongside the desires for eating and drinking and reduced to tactile stimulation), and it is not immediately apparent that he possesses a general theory or account of desire. No doubt, Aristotle discusses many aspects of <i>orexis</i> (Aristotle’s general term for desire) in relationship to human action, in his consideration of the rhetorical manipulation of the emotions, and in his examination of animate motion. But as Pearson notes, neither in Aristotle’s catalog of writings nor in his surviving works is there an Aristotelian <i>peri orexeôs</i>. Pearson’s monograph, which is the “distant descendant” of a Ph.D. completed at Cambridge in 2004, thus is an exercise in detective work which combs through Aristotle’s discussions of desire throughout the corpus (albeit with focus on the ethical treatises, the <i>Rhetoric</i>, and <i>De Anima</i>) in order to reconstruct what a general theory of desire would look like for Aristotle. Pearson does a masterful job at drawing together into a coherent whole many of Aristotle’s scattered remarks about the different aspects of desire and provides a model for textual analysis of philosophically abstruse passages. Along the way, he overturns a number of scholarly orthodoxies (for instance, that Aristotle’s account of <i>thumos</i> retains elements of Platonic <i>thumos</i> or “spiritedness” or that <i>thumos</i> has a unique relationship to the <i>kalon</i> or what is fine) and situates Aristotle’s theory amidst contemporary philosophers of desire such as Thomas Nagle, Thomas Scanlon, and G.F. Schuler. The result is a landmark work of scholarship that scholars working on Aristotle’s moral psychology will need to engage and argue with. Whether the work warrants the adornment of Aphrodite is a question to which I will return in my conclusion. (shrink)

Aristotle’s treatment of tactility is at odds with the hierarchical order of psyche’s faculties. Touching is the commonest and lowest power; it is possessed by all sentient beings; thinking is, on the contrary, the highest faculty that distinguishes human beings. Yet, while Aristotle maintains against some of his predecessors that to think is not to sense, he nevertheless posits a causal link between practical intelligence and tactility and even describes noetic activity as a certain kind of touch. This essay elucidates (...) Aristotle’s analysis of the sense of touch in De anima and argues that tactility provides a paradigm for sensitivity in general and in particular for the reflexivity of sensation whereby the senses disclose not only what they are sensing but also that they are sensing. This feature, it is argued, has epistemological and ontological consequences. The sense of touch testifies to the physical presence of material beings and provides an empirical verification of substance’s essential feature, namely, self-reference. (shrink)

In disagreement with Claudia Baracchi’s controversial thesis that there is a “simultaneity and indissolubility” if not an “identity” of intelligence (nous) and perception (aisthēsis) at the core of Aristotle’s philosophy, I will argue that Aristotle maintains a fundamental distinction between these cognitive faculties. My goal in this paper is to examine specific parts of two central and complex passages, VI.8, 1142a12-30 and VI.11, 1143a33-b15, from the Nicomachean Ethics to show that Baracchi’s view is unpersuasive. I will show that Aristotle considers (...) nous to be a different capacity than mere perception and one through which particulars and indemonstrable principles become intelligible. Moreover, I will show that Aristotle considers that the objects of nous differ in kind from those that sensation (our senses) and perception (inference from our senses) grasp. After examining critically Baracchi’s thesis in light of a close reading of those two relevant passages, I will conclude the paper by showing the significance of Aristotle’s claim that a state is defined in terms of its objects of apprehension for understanding the distinction between nous and aisthēsis. (shrink)

The article focuses on an unexamined so far aspect of byzantine philosophy, namely the influence of Arabic philosophy upon byzantine thinkers. Despite the vicinity of Byzantium and Arabic territories, the philosophical interactions were minimal. Scholarios claimed, in a dedicatory epistle to Constantine Paleologus (1405-1453), that he had studied the treatises of Avicenna, Averroes, and other Arab and Persian philosophers. He admitted that Averroes was beyond doubt the best commentator of Aristotle. Scholarios acknowledged that the study of the Arabs contributed immensely (...) to his philosophical education and particularly to the proper understanding of the Aristotelian philosophy (Scholarios, vii.1-6). Scholarios aimed at the enrichment and renewal of Byzantine philosophy. Besides his high esteem for Arabic philosophy, he devoted a large part of his life translating and paraphrasing the Scholastics, especially Aquinas. Despite Scolarios’ claim about his erudition on the Arab and Persian philosophers, a detailed examination of his works proves that in most cases he simply reproduced and incorporated sections from Aquinas’ works, without resorting to the original sources. Scholarios’ references to the Arabs are multiplied in his translations and compendia of Aquinas’ works, but are reduced significantly in his original texts. Frequently Scholarios refrained from mentioning the Arab philosophers, despite the fact that he commented on Aquinas’ passages, which are dedicated to Avicenna or Averroes. On the contrary, Scholarios did not avoid mentioning in detail Aquinas’ Christian or ancient Greek sources. It is obvious that Scholarios did not have a consistent approach towards Arabic philosophy. Most of the times he reproduced loosely Aquinas’ passages, where the latter commented on the Arabs. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Aristotle’s identification, in De Anima 2.5, of αἴσθησις with an ἀλλοίωσίς τις that is not ‘a kind of destruction of something by its contrary’. Drawing on a passage from Metaphysics Iota 5, it argues that when so described, what is referred to as an ἀλλοίωσίς τις is not a uniquely perceptual alteration.

At De Anima II 5, 417b17, Aristotle says, ‘The first transition (πρώτη μεταβολή) in that which can perceive is brought about by the parent, and when it is born it already has [the faculty of] sense-perception in the same way as it has knowledge. Actual sense-perception is so spoken of in the same way as contemplation.’ The purpose of this paper is to determine the nature of first transitions.

The sense of smell occupies a peculiar intermediate position within Aristotle's theory of sense perception: odours, like colours and sounds, are perceived at a distance through an external medium of air or water; yet in their nature they are intimately related to flavours, the proper objects of taste, which for Aristotle is a form of touch. In this paper, I examine Aristotle's claims about odour and smell, especially in De Anima II.9 and De Sensu 5, to see what light they (...) shed on his theory of sense perception more generally. In the first half, I argue that neither of the two most influential recent ways of understanding Aristotle's theory of perception can adequately account for what he says about the sense of smell. In the second half, I offer my own positive account, considering and resolving various puzzles raised by Aristotle's claims about the nature of odour and its relation to flavour. Finally, I conclude that Aristotle's discussions of odour and smell suggest a plausible and interesting way of understanding the relationship, on his view, between ordinary, material changes in the sense organs and the activation of the capacity to perceive, considered merely as such. (shrink)

In De Anima II 5, 417a21-b16, Aristotle makes a number of distinctions between types of transitions, affections, and alterations. The objective of this paper is to sort out the relationships between these distinctions by means of determining which of the distinguished types of change can be coextensive and which cannot, and which can overlap and which cannot. From the results of this analysis, an interpretation of 417a21-b16 is then constructed that differs from previous interpretations in certain important respects, chief among (...) which is its characterization of transitions from first potentiality to first actuality, e.g., learning, not as `ordinary', but rather as acquisitions of natural dispositions or faculties. (shrink)

Arguably one of the most fundamental phase shifts that occurred in the intellectual history of Western culture involved the ontological reduction of secondary qualities to primary qualities. To say the least, this reduction worked to undermine the foundations undergirding Aristotelian thought in support of a scientific view of the world based strictly on an examination of the real—primary— qualities of things. In this essay, I identify the so-called “Causal Argument” for a reductive view of secondary qualities and seek to deflect (...) this challenge by deriving some plausible consequences that support a non-reductive view of secondary qualities from an Aristotelian view (via the philosophical commentary of Thomas Aquinas). Specifically, my argument has two facets. First, I show that Aristotle’s view both implies recognition of the extramental existence of secondary qualities and is a prima facia natural view to take regarding the ontology of secondary qualities. Second, I show that the Causal Argument, which is thought to undermine a natural view of secondary qualities as real things, loses its bite when one examines perception in light the ontological relationship among the categories of quality, quantity and substance. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, I’ll rehearse an argument that perceiving that we see and hear isn’t a special case of perception in Aristotle but is rather a necessary condition for any perception whatsoever: the turning of one’s attention to the affection of the sense organs. In the second part of the paper, I’ll consider the thesis that the activity of the active intellect is analogous to perceiving that we see and hear.

I argue that the idea that mental states possess a primitive intentionality in virtue of which they are able to represent or ‘intend’ putative particulars derives largely from Brentano‘s misinterpretation of Aristotle and the scholastics, and that without this howler the application of intentionality to phenomenal content would never have gained currency.

Abstract: I defend the intuition that the phenomenology of our experience is right in attributing the colors we see to objects; but although colors are properties of objects, they are constitutively dependent on the perceiver’s experiences. I offer a metaphysical account for this primitivist intuition, in response to David Chalmers’ arguments against it, drawing inspiration from Aristotle’s theory of causation.

Our thesis is that proprioception is not a sixth sense distinct from the sense of touch, but a part of that tactile (or haptic) sense. The tactile sense is defined as the sense whose direct intentional objects are macroscopic mechanical properties. We first argue (against D. Armstrong, 1962; B. O'Shaughnessy 1989, 1995, 1998 and M. Martin, 1992, 1993,1995) that the two following claims are incompatible : (i) proprioception is a sense distinct from touch; (ii) touch is a bipolar modality, that (...) intrinsically has both a subjective-bodily pole and objective pole. We then argue that the bipolarity of touch should be preferred over the introduction of a sui generis sense of the body. We try to revive Aristotle suggestion according to which the body is the tactile medium (like the air for sight). Since this medium is constantly changing its shape, we need some specific channel of information about its state : proprioception, functionally defined, is that part of touch which informs us about the state of this changing tactile medium. Though muscular and articular receptors are usually dedicated to inform us about the mechanical properties of the tactile media, and the skin receptors about the mechanical properties of the tactile objects, this is not essentially so. In weighting or wielding experiments we access the weight of external objects even when skin sensitivity is absent; in prosthetic touch, the skin receptors play the role usually assigned to muscle and articular receptors, namely to inform us about the mechanical state of the tactile medium. So proprioception, anatomically defined, can play both the role of informing us about the tactile medium, or about the tactile objects. That other sensory modalities also rely on proprioceptive information should be understood in terms of cross-modal dependencies: of sight, hearing, smell, taste...on touch. (shrink)