Aristotle

Aristotle with Professor Robert Bolton

January 24th, 2013 – Lecture

  • The class will deal mostly with perception. This affects four areas:
    1. Epistemology and philosophy of science
      • Lets say that I make the judgement that there are colored things in front of me.
      • On what grounds am I warranted in making this perceptual judgement?
    2. Psychology
      • You can study perception as one of the modes of our psychological state.
    3. Biology
      • There’s a broader question of what type of role does perception play in physical beings.
      • Aristotle is not only a philosopher but a natural scientist.
      • There is no conflict between natural and social science for Aristotle.
    4. Ethics and political philosophy
      • Aristotle assigns a very import role to perception to identify some very important part of what is needed for correct moral judgement.
  • The main text for Aristotle and epistemology will be Posterior Analytics

January 31st, 2013 – Lecture

Generation of Animals

In all this Nature acts like an intelligent workman. For to the essence of plants belongs no other function or business than the production of seed; since, then, this is brought about by the union of male and female, Nature has mixed these and set them together in plants, so that the sexes are not divided in them. Plants, however, have been investigated elsewhere. But the function of the animal is not only to generate (which is common to all living things), but they all of them participate also in a kind of knowledge, some more and some less, and some very little indeed. For they have sense-perception, and this is a kind of knowledge.

  • Aristotle’s word for knowledge is gnosis.

(If we consider the value of this we find that it is of great importance compared with the class of lifeless objects, but of little compared with the use of the intellect. For against the latter the mere participation in touch and taste seems to be practically nothing.)

  • Aristotle is comparing two kinds of knowledge, he is using a Greek word which means “intellectual knowledge.”
  • Taste and touch do not use reason or the intellect.
  • There are various words that Aristotle uses for reason and intellect.
  • Some of these words are ambigious between the state of intellect and the abiblity to reason.
  • We also uses the word phronesis.
  • We start with this claim about perception, and he makes this claim in a number of places.
  • He will want to defend it.
  • Philosophically surprising to say perception is a kind of knowledge
    • You may think we make “perceptual mistakes.”
    • We mispercieve all the time – optical illusions, mirages.
    • How is perception knowledge if we mispercieve.
    • Plato refers to this in Theatetus.
      • Claim: perception is identical with knowledge.
      • The objection is he raises is misperception.
    • Is perception enough for knowledge?
  • The Greek word aisthesis is an ambiguous term, it can be a capacity or an activity – a “success term.”
  • Aristotle means this more as “Percieving is a kind of knowing.”
  • We have Plato saying that perception is no kind of knowledge.
    • Plato give some arguments for this.
    • Perception cannot reach truth because perception cannot get at “what is.”

On Interpretation

As there are in the mind thoughts which do not involve truth or falsity, and also those which must be either true or false, so it is in speech. For truth and falsity imply combination and separation. Nouns and verbs, provided nothing is added, are like thoughts without combination or separation; ‘man’ and ‘white’, as isolated terms, are not yet either true or false. In proof of this, consider the word ‘goat-stag.’ It has significance, but there is no truth or falsity about it, unless ‘is’ or ‘is not’ is added, either in the present or in some other tense.

De Anima

There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, and perceiving. Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something which is. Indeed the ancients go so far as to identify thinking and perceiving; e.g. Empedocles says ‘For ’tis in respect of what is present that man’s wit is increased’, and again ‘Whence it befalls them from time to time to think diverse thoughts’, and Homer’s phrase ‘For suchlike is man’s mind’ means the same.

They all look upon thinking as a bodily process like perceiving, and hold that like is known as well as perceived by like, as I explained at the beginning of our discussion.

  • They have this arguement for linking percieving with knowing, Empedocles.
  • Because in both cases “like is known by like.”
  • What exactly does this have to do with anything?

Metaphysics

And in general it is because these thinkers suppose knowledge to be sensation, and this to be a physical alteration, that they say that what appears to our senses must be true; for it is for these reasons that both Empedocles and Democritus and, one may almost say, all the others have fallen victims to opinions of this sort. For Empedocles says that when men change their condition they change their knowledge.

February 7th, 2013 – Lecture

  • Knowledge (gnosis) split into two:
    1. Perception
    2. Intellection/intelligent

On Dreams

We must, in the next place, investigate the subject of the dream, and first inquire to which of the faculties of the soul it presents itself, i.e. whether the affection is one which pertains to the faculty of intelligence or to that of sense-perception; for these are the only faculties within us by which we acquire knowledge.

  • Do we get knowledge in dreams?
  • People used to think that you’d predict the future in dreams.
  • We get the strong claim that the list above is the only source of knowledge.
  • Strongly anti-Platonic
    • Plato argues that perception cannot be a source of knowledge because it cannot deliver it in propositional form.
    • Perception can only deliver “red” and “card” and “here now” – they are restricted in what they can provide you with.

February 14th, 2013 – Lecture

Nicomachean Ethics

  • Here are the kinds of things you get in intellectual learning, of the most advanced sort.
  • States of excellence.
  • Chapter 3, plays an interesting role.
  • Episteme can mean two things:
    1. A science
      • Principles
      • Theorems (archai)
    2. Knowledge
  • All scientific knowledge is thought to be capable of being taught, and its object being learnt.
  • All teaching starts from what is already known.
  • It’s sometimes perceived through induction, and sometimes through deduction.
    • First principles are taught by induction.
    • And deduction precedes from universals.
  • If we get the knowledge of principles from deduction and knowledge of something from inducition form particulars, where do we get knowledge of particulkars from?

March 14th, 2013 – Short paper assignment

  • Describe in detail Aristotle’s epistomological program in the “Posterior Analytics.”
    • With special attention to I 1-3, 18, 31 and II 19.
  • In your description, describe and evaluate the account of this offered by Freda and Bronstein.

Aristotle, Knowledge, and Perception

Science, knowledge, proof, perception, demonstration – in the many thousands of years since Aristotle wrote his Posterior Analytics, there has been much development, both scientific and philosophical, produced on these matters. Notwithstanding the the many important and exciting discoveries humankind has learned in this time, Aristotle’s very old account of scientific knowledge in his Posterior Analytics stubbornly remains as one of the most influential, compelling, and relevant works in epistemology, philosophy of science, and even metaphysics. Aristotle’s epistemological program in Posterior Analytics solves the skeptical trilemma in way that is both simple and difficult to understand. It is simple because it can be expressed in one word: perception. It is difficult to understand because of the stipulations on the ways in which perception is a form of knowledge and what types of knowledge perception is not even a means to. With a full understanding, however, Aristotle’s account of knowledge and its source is intellectually satisfying and complete. This paper will seek to make accessible this epistemological program. Then, with this understanding, describe and evaluate the account offered by two papers produced in response to Aristotle. The first is ‘Aristotle’s Rationalism’ by Michael Frede, in which Frede describes how he believes that Aristotle is more of a rationalist than the empiricist he is typically described as. The second is David Bronstein’s work, ‘The Origin and Aim of Posterior Analytics II.19’, in which Bronstein argues that knowledge of first principles do not come from induction for Aristotle, but rather perception. This will provide a full understanding of Aristotle’s epistemological program.

The beginning of all knowledge for Aristotle is what he calls “first principles.” In this was, all learning and knowledge is derived from these first principles. So what are first principles (FPs)? They hold very specific qualities. FPs are true in that they are both necessarily true and could not possibly be otherwise. FPs are primary in that there is no prior truth from which they can be derived from. FPs are immediate in that there is no middle term to explain their connection (this is a logical point). FPs are better known than those things that we derive from them, meaning they are somehow closer to agents epistemologically. FPs are explanatory of those things which a rational agent derives from them. Aristotle insists on the necessity for first principles because without them, one if first to accept one of three impossible and unacceptable conclusions, which shall be covered shortly. It is from these that all art, science, and knowledge is derived, Aristotle believes, but what is that process?

What Aristotle then claims is that all knowledge and teaching follows from these FPs with these qualities. In the case of inductive arguments, the teacher proves something universal from particular cases. In the case of deductive arguments, the teacher proves something assuming what we presume to grasp (like an FP). Generally speaking, we presuppose that some information is, and from it we can comprehend another reasoned fact. When such an argument expresses knowledge and is a scientific induction, it is known as a demonstration. A demonstration is when a rational agent logically derives a conclusion from premises which are more basic (in being closer to primary truths and sense-perception the conclusion). A rational agent comes to know the conclusion by having two premises and one conclusion. The first premise and the middle premise share exactly one term or predicate. The conclusion and the middle premise share exactly one term or predicate, specifically the one not share with the first premise. In this way, a rational agent moves links the premise to the middle term, and then the middle term to the conclusion, moving away from the more basic, more prior truths.

This description of syllogistic logic is inoffensive, but is this not just coming from saying that there are indemonstrable first principles? This raises the question, then, of how The question that still has not been answered by the description is Aristotle’s solution to the epistemological trilemma. Aristotle addresses this issue, but what, specifically, is the issue? The problem is what every epistemological theory must escape, and its three choices are:

  1. Circular reasoning, that knowledge is justified based on itself, that every theory is support by a theory which is supported by the theories it proves.
  2. Infinite regress, that every proof actually be of infinite length.
  3. Complete skepticism, that knowledge is impossible.

Aristotle rejects (1) on grounds that no demonstration can be prior to and more familiar than itself. Aristotle rejects (2) on grounds that infinitely long proofs are absurd, assuming that infinitely long proofs do not exist. Aristotle rejects (3) on grounds that it is inelegant. Therefore Aristotle’s epistemology has to find a way for agents to grasp some precepts.

Additionally, demonstration of anything is impossible without beginning somewhere, and Aristotle solves this problem with perception. All animals have this faculty, but what Aristotle believes is unique about humans is there ability of retention. With this, from perception arises memory. Repeated memories of the same things produces experience. With this experience, a rational agent utilizes inductive logic to count and generalize individual kinds to make inductive generalizations of universals. This gives an agent an intuitive grasp of first principles. It is thus through perception and induction from specific experiences to general universal that rational agents come to know first principles, and then from these first principles all other truths can follow. This is how Aristotle solves the skeptical trilemma.

Having described Aristotle’s epistemological program in a fashion which draws directly from the original text (namely Posterior Analytics) in an accessible manner, we move to an application and discussion of it from Michael Frede. In ‘Aristotle’s Rationalism’, Frede argues that while Aristotle is sometimes referred to as an empiricist, he is more accurately labelled as a rationalist. He then goes on to specifically enumerate how Aristotle’s reason plays a role in his epistemological program.

The reason that Frede’s (and ultimately Bronstein’s) paper is needed is that Aristotle’s solution to the trilemma could arguable be either empiricist or rationalist in nature. It’s empiricist in that knowledge of first principles is a product of data collected from the experience derived from perception. On the other hand, as Frede points out, the solution is rationalist in nature in that all demonstrations are done on first principles using reason alone. The puzzle being why would Aristotle insist that all we know is derived from reason if he insists primary truths are the product of perception? Frede points out that it is not immediately obvious how these are immediately reconcilable.

Frede elucidates this puzzle, but is more interested in the latter portion of the puzzle as described above. Specifically, Frede explores those ways which Aristotle uses reason when Aristotle is in the non-experiential portions of his trilemma solution. Using evidence from Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics, Frede shows that Aristotle’s position is actually that of perception falling short of true knowledge, but does give rise to it in humans. According to Aristotle and Frede, this is because perception (and by extension experience) cannot offer true knowledge of universals. However, practically, in the day to day affairs of a human rational agent, reason is evidently only useful in specific and highly elevated instances. In practice, from an Aristotelian perspective, experience is more useful than reason, Frede argues. The prominent role that reason plays in Aristotle’s epistemological program, according to Frede, is that an adequate notion is properly related to other true notions. Only through reason can this be acquired.

Bronstein, in his work ‘The Origin and Aim of Posterior Analytics II.19’, explores the other side of Aristotle’s epistemological program. Where Frede would answer “induction”, Bronstein is more inclined to say “perception”, and the paper is him outlining his reason for this. The first portion of II.19, Bronstein thinks, is setting up perception as the basis for all knowledge. This is more of empiricist reading, and Bronstein has strong examples. Namely, this quote,

And so from perception there arises memory, as we say, and from memory (when it occurs often in connection with the same thing) experience; for many memories form a single experience. And from experience, or [rather] from the entire universal that has come to rest in the soul

The mistake that Bronstein believes his peers to be making is in thinking that “grasping the universal” and acquiring knowledge of a first principle are the same thing. While Aristotle is unclear about the actual process of moving from an experience of universals to a first principle, it is very clear that there are, for Aristotle steps between the two. However, Aristotle is clear about what the two can do. For instance, Bronstein points out that experience is knowledge of particulars, but it is from this knowledge of particulars that one access the FPs, and that this is through reason.

It is in this way that Bronstein and Frede are consistent while arguing from different standpoints. Frede is clearly more interested in arguing for a rationalist reading, and Bronstein an empiricist reading, yet both come to the conclusion that it is epistemological data gathering that perception performs, and the moving from particulars to universals that reason performs. However, Bronstein has the more powerful case. Frede concludes that Aristotle is a rationalist, while it is clear upon close reading that while induction plays an important role in moving towards the FPs, it is ultimately perception, and repeated perception, which performs the task

In a series of clever moves and clear definitions, Aristotle moves from the skeptical trilemma to an intuitive, simple account of how it is one can come to know something. Frede interprets these moves from a very rationalist approach, primarily exploring those portions where Aristotle uses reason to induce universals. Bronstein, on the other hand, commits himself to a more empiricist reading, as Aristotle is very explicit about perception being the knowledge of FPs. It is because of this explicitness that Bronstein is more successful than Frede, in that he has the stronger claim and the evidence for it.

Aristotle’s Rationalism by Michael Frede

  • Aristotle says our knowledge has roots in perception
    • Also believe in detailed observation
    • It is unsurprising then, that Aristotle is often called an empiricist.
  • Aristotle all thinks that all knowledge is either:
    • knowledge of principles that govern a certain domain,
    • knowledge from deduction of these principles
  • It is not immediately obvious that these claims go together
    • Then, though all knowledge owes its epistemic mass to principles, science owes it to induction from these.
    • So there is no problem in calling Aristotle an empiricist?
  • But this is not Aristotle’s view
    • He clearly thinks we have immediate knowledge of primary truths.
      • He cannot think, therefore, that our knowledge of them depends on deductive confirmation.
    • There are seen by reason to be immediate truths.
    • And being as he thinks that all truths are derived from reason, he is the paradigm of a rationalists.
  • This is puzzling, because why would he insist that all we know is derived from reason if he insists primary truths are the product of perception.
  • He is not so much interested in resolving this puzzle as he is interested in exploring the role in which reason plays in Aristotle’s rationalism.
  • He focuses primarilly on the Metaphysics and *Posterior Analytics** B19.
  • In Metaphysics, Aristotle thinks that perception falls short of true knowledge, but does give rise to it in humans.
    • True knowledge is universal
    • Experiential knowledge is knowledge of the mere fact.
  • Aristotle thinks that not only do you have to be justified in knowing something to actually know it, the justification has to be the actual justification of something.
    • Like Plato, knowledge involves understanding.
    • Necessary relationship between what is the explanation and what is explained.
      • Such that what is explained cannot be be the case.
  • Experience does not offer true knowledge of universals.
  • True knowledge goes beyond experience in that it involves the grasp of some universal feature.
    • Perceptions and memories, therefore, do not constitute an account of knowledge.
  • Reason is not needed, you can go far without it.
    • In practice, experience seems more useful than pure reason.
  • Reason is only useful in specific and highly elevated instances.
  • What makes a notion an adequate notion is being properly related to other true notions.
    • One imports a whole system of related concepts in a way that one can understand.
    • The corresponding features stand in proper relation to each other.
  • To introduce reason is to grasp certain features and the necessary relations between them.
    • What’s distinctive about reason is to grasph universals.
  • Animals don’t have this, at least not all.
  • Predecessor’s failed to identify the human ability to grasp general features and the relations between them.
  • There is a distincitive human ability to grasph general features and universal truths.
    • Like in considering a line or point, we know these have certain relationships that combine to make meaning.
  • Many philosophers reject Aristotle’s theory of knowledge because of obscurity and mystery of the mind’s apparently (and falsely) mystical ability to grasp universals.
    • Through our theoretical understanding of them being faint and dim.
  • The problem with this is the assumption about what it means to have reason.

The Origin and Aim of Posterior Analytics II.19 by David Bronstein

  • Perception is the original prior knowledge through which the first principles become known.

Paper outline

  • 1 page introduction
  • 3 pages of Aristotle
    1. First principles, demonstration
    2. Objections, Menlo, trilemma
    3. Solution, perception as a form of knowledge
  • 1 page of Frede
  • 1 page of Bronstein

Sources

  1. Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Aristotle’s Theory of Knowledge and Demonstration, Dr. Cynthia Freeland, University of Houston
  2. Aristotle. Posterior Analytics. Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press, 1994. Print.
  3. Philosophy 433, Philosophy of Aristotle, University of Washington Lecture Notes
  4. New Oxford American Dictionary
  5. Aristotle. Aristotle’s Prior and posterior analytics : a revised text. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. Print.

Posterior Analytics

  • First principles: there is nothing prior to them from which they can be derived. They are:
    • True
      • What is necessary
      • Cannot be otherwise
    • Primary (primitive)
      • If and only if there is no prior principle from which it can be derived
    • Immediate (unmediated)
      • If and only if there is no middle term to explain their connection
    • Better known (than what we derive from them)
    • Prior (to what we derive from them)
      • There are two senses
        1. In itself, by nature, further from perception
        2. To us, closer to perception
    • Explanatory (of what we derive from them)
  • Aristotle insists on indemonstrable first principles because otherwise one is forced into
    • infinitely long explanations
      • No proof is infinitely long.
    • circular reasoning
      • Impossible because then something will have to be prior to and more familiar than itself, which is impossible.
    • skepticism

We reply that not all knowledge is demonstrative, and in fact knowledge of the immediate premises is indemonstrable. Indeed, it is evident that this must be so.

  • Demonstration:
    • Deriving a conclusion syllogistically from more basic truths
      • Syllogistically: an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn (whether validly or not) from two given or assumed propositions (premises), each of which shares a term with the conclusion, and shares a common or middle term not present in the conclusion
    • Explanation is a mirror-image of demonstration. To explain why it is the case that p is to deduce p from more basic principles.
    • A syllogism that is necessary

Book I

Chapter 1
  • Barnes
    • All teaching/learning comes from preexisting knowledge.
      • All math and arts is acquired this way.
      • Deductive arguments use what we already know
        • Assumes what we presume to grasp
      • Inductive arguments use what we already know
        • Proves something universal from particular cases
    • There are two ways in which we already have knowledge
      1. Some things we must already believe are.
      2. Of others we must grasp what the items spoken about are
    • It is possible to acquire knowledge of some items, and get knowledge of others are the very same time.
      • Moving from the universal you know to the particular
      • You already knew that a triangle’s angles sum to two right triangles.
      • You got to know that the figure in the semicircle was a triangle at the same time as you were being led to the conclusion.
  • Freeland
    • All teaching and learning result from previous cognition.
      1. We presuppose that something is (the fact); or
      2. We comprehend what it is (the reasoned fact).
    • Solution to Meno’s Paradox: We know in one way what we are learning, while being ignorant in another way.
Chapter 2
  • Barnes
    • We think we understand something in and of itself when we understand the explanation for something and think that it could not be otherwise.
      • It is plain to understand something of this sort.
    • We know things through demonstration
      • A demonstration is a scientific deduction
        • Where scientific means “possesing by which we understand something.”
    • A demonstrative understanding goes from those things that are true, primitive, and familiar to the conclusions.
      • There can be a deduction even without these conditions, but there can’t be a demonstration.
    • They must be true because you can’t understand that which isn’t the case.
      • Must proceed from items that are primitive and indemonstrable.
    • Things are prior and more familiar in two ways:
      1. It is not the same to be prior to us and prior to us in nature.
      2. To be more familiar and more familiar to us. (?)
    • Prior and more familiar to us are items closer to us in perception.
    • What is most universal is furthest away to us in perception.
      • Particulars are nearest.
    • To proceed from primitives is to proceed from what is appropriate.
      • The principle of a demonstration is the immediate proposition.
      • A proposition is immediate if it follows from no other.
      • A proposition is one part of a contradictory pair.
  • Freeland
    • Demonstration: a deduction expressing knowledge.
      • Apodeixis = syllogismos epistemonikos
    • Premises of a demonstration must be
      • Absolute features: true, primary, immediate,
      • Relative features: better known than (more familiar, gnorimoteron), prior to, and explanatory of the conclusion. “better known” and “prior” have two senses: 1. closer to us, or clearer through sense-perception; 2. further from us, closer to the truth (closer to the universal)
    • Key terms
      • proposition (protasis, premise): one part of a contradictory pair
      • posit (thesis): something that cannot be proved; need not be grasped by anyone who is to learn
      • axiom (axiom): ditto, but MUST be grasped by anyone who is to learn
      • supposition (hypothesis): assumes something does or does not exist
      • definition (horismos): does not assume something is (a kind of thesis, not a hypothesis)
Chapter 3
  • Freeland
    • It is not true that all things that are known are known by demonstration.
    • To insist on this would result in one of two unacceptable consequences:
      1. Either there will be an infinite regress, since the primitives will have to be demonstrated, on and on ad infinitum; or
      2. There will be circular demonstrations. (Aristotle thinks some circular or reciprocal demonstrations are possible, involving what he calls “counterpredicables,” but that these will be very limited.)
Chapter 6
  • Every demonstrative science is concerned with three things:
    1. the kind (genos): things it posits to exist;
    2. the common axioms: primitives from which demonstration proceeds;
    3. attributes (pathe): things that will hold “in themselves” of the kind; we assume what each means (and prove that it is)
  • More on axioms, postulates, etc.:
    1. A provable but unproved assumption is a postulate;
    2. When accepted by the person, this becomes a hypothesis;
    3. Hypotheses are propositions (they assert existence or non-existence); definitions are not;
    4. Postulates and hypotheses are universal or particular, definitions are neither.
Chapter 18
  • If explanations do not arrive at what is atomic,
    • If there is not one middle term but several,
      • Then the explanations too are several.
    • The middle term that is explanatory of the particulars is the one that is nearest to the to that which it is explanotory for (universal or particular).
    • Example:
      1. C is explanatory for D of B’s holding of it.
      2. So C is explanotory of A for D.
      3. B is explanotory of A for C
      4. B is explanotory of A for itself.
Chapter 31
Synopsis
  • All knowledge depends on pre-existent knowledge of the learner
    • Some things the learner does not need to know in advance
    • In a sense he knows the conclusion in advance.
  • Understanding requires knowledge of the explanation
    • Demonstrative knowledge comes from principles that are:
      • True
      • Primitive
      • Immediate
      • Prior to the conclusion
      • More familiar than the conclusion
      • Explanatory of the conclusion
    • The principles must be better known than the conclusion
    • This account of understanding threatens to regress to
      • Skepticism
      • Circular reasoning
    • What is understood must follow from necessary principles
  • Principles are unprovable

Book II

Chapter 19
  • Ross
    • Demonstrative science is impossible without knowledge of first principles. Which raises two questions:
      1. Whether these are objects of science, or of some other faculty.
      2. Whether such faculty comes into being or is present without being recognized.
    • It would be strange if we had knowledge better than demonstration without knowing it.
    • Such a faculty, all animals have.
      • An innate faculty of discernment, perception.
      • For some animals, the knowledge does not persist.
      • But for others, there is the power of retention.
    • Thus from perceptions arises memory.
      • Repeated memory of the same things makes experience.
      • When the whole universal has come to be in soul through experience, comes the one distinct from many and identical in all instance
        • The beginning of art and science.
    • Thus these states of knowledge are neither innate, nor come from more cognitive states of the mind, but from perception.
    • Induction through perception implants the universal in us.
Commentary
  • We now have to consider how first principles come to be known and what faculties know them.
  • The first principles are more knowable than the conclusions that follow from them.
    • It is not from science that we grasp the first principles.
    • It is from intuitive reasons that we do.
    • Demonstration cannot be the proof of demonstration.
      • Therefore, science cannot be the proof of science.
    • Intuitive reason is the only necessarily true state other than science.
      • Yet we cannot acquire it equally without pre-existing knowledge.
      • So we can neither already have it or acquire it.
      • It follows that it must start with some faculty.

April 25th, 2013 – Final Paper Assignment

Discuss Aristotle’s general account in De Anima II 5 and II 12 of how perception comes about. Explain in detail what methodological procedures Aristotle was following in the chapter and how following them enables him to guarantee the normal objective accuracy of perception. Consider the accounts of these matters offered by Sorabji, Burnyeat, and Castion in your discussion.

Introduction

Aristotle on Perception Course notes from Marc Cohen

  • Aristotle spends a great deal of time in De Anima discussin the topic of sense-perception.
    • What is his theory of perception?
    • Is it suprisingly difficult to get clear on exactly what it is?
  • He begins II 5 by saying that perception:
    1. “Occurs in being moved and affected.”
    2. “Seems to be a type of alteration.”
    3. Is a process in which “like is affected by like.”
  • Much of his subsequent discussion is on the physics and physiology of perception:
    1. Each sense has a sense-organ (eyes, ears)
    2. Each sense has a medium (air, water)
    3. Each sense has proper objects (color and sight, sound and hearing)
    4. The proper object of a sense is a qualification of an external object, the color red we perceive is a quality of some indiviual body.
    5. Perception is or involves a causal process of the external object through the medium to the sense-organ, and ultimately to the “primary” sense organ (which Aristotle thought was the heart, but we now believe it to be the brain).
    6. This process is one in which the sensible quality of the external object is transferred to the sense-organ of the perceiver.

Perception is not an alteration

  • All of this makes it seem as if Aristotle thinks perception as a physiological process.
    • But things are not so simple.
    • First, Aristotle emplyes his distinction between levels of potentiality and between levels of actuality.
  • He then contrasts two cases.
    1. The transistion from level A to level B.
    2. The transition from level B to level C.

In the first and second case we pass from potentially to actually knowing; but in the first case we do so by being altered through learning, and by frequent changes from the contrary state, while in the second case – where we pase from having … knowledge without actualizing it – we do so in another way.

  • The passage from potentiality 1 to actuality 1 is an alteration, the passage from potential to actuality is not an alteration.
  • His point is that a thing that is affected in the second way i not altered by being so affected.
  • Since perception is “second case” transition, it should not be considered an alteration at all.
    • Aristotle admits that ordinary language does not have different words for transitions from two levels of potentiality.
  • Aristotle concludes II 5 by refining the curde claim with which he began, that perception is an alteration in which like is affected by like, and puts his point instead in terms of potentiality and actuality.

The perceiver is potentially what the perceptible object is already, as we have said. When it is being affected, then, it is unlike the object; but when it has been affected it has been made like the object and has acquired its quality.

Physiological vs. Cognitive Interpretations

  • Supporting P
    1. In perception the sense organ is “colored”, and this explains after-images.
  • Supporting C
    1. Perceinving is like thinking, except that the object of perception are external. Souls.

How perception comes about

Methodological procedures

‘Intentionality and Physiological Processes: Aristotle’s Theory of Sense Perception’ by Richard Sorabji

Section I

  • The most valuyable aspect of Aristotle’s theory of sense perception has been largely neglected.
    • This lies in “redrawing the map” where perception is drawn.
    • This will be in section 1 of the paper.
  • Perception is not to be viewed as a rudimentary reaction with little content.
    • Not is it a work of reason or thought.
    • It is halway between the two.
  • Plato argues that the soul uses the senses as channels to perceive sense qualities like whiteness, but cannot use them for distinguishing and comparing qualities.
    • Or for “something being the case”
    • Or for the truth.
      • This requires reasoning and belief.
    • Reasoning is described as the silent dialectical debate of the soul with itself.
      • Belief is the conclusion to this debate.
    • Plato greatly narrows the role of perception.
      • This narrowing becomes critical when Aristotle revives the other half of what Alcmaeon says by denying reasoning and belief.
    • Aristotle is then obliged enomoursly to expand the content of perception.
  • Plato did not have to face this problem.
  • Aristotle does three things.
    1. First, he tidies up the concept of reason by bringing belief under it.
    2. He gives the perceptual content one of the most massive expansions in
      in Greek philosophy.
    3. Despite expanding its role, he maintains that Plato’s denial that perception involves belief or is a function of reason.
  • He incorporates perception the function described by Plato, the perception of whiteness and other sense-qualities perceptible to one self.
    • But also, he added movement, rest, shape, extension, number, and unity.
    • These are overlooked by Plato when he says that you cannot perceive through one sense why you perceive through another.
  • It would be wrong to suppose that this propositional perception really involves an inference of reason merely on the ground that sense-qualities like color, are said to be essential object of perception.
  • Propositions are also involved in phantasia, which in Aristotle’s De Anima is perceptual and post-perceptual appearance.
    • Examples of post-perceptual appearances are imagination, dreams, and memory.
  • It has been thought that Aristotle oscillates wildly on the amount of mental thought he allows to animals, and his propositional perception also solves this problem.
    • In De Anima, he allows that lions can entertain propositions about eating oxes.
    • He allows animals to have emtotions involving the belief of future harm or benefit.
  • These are examples of how generous a content Aristotle gives to sense- percetion.
  • Aristotle now needs to show that his expansion of perception does not turn perception into belief or make it a function of reason.
    • Aristotle employs a kind of discriminating to escape this.
  • Aristotle has another way of making perception fall short of belief, a way which commits him to disagreeing with Aristotle.
    • His argument is that perception may very way make you entertain that the sun is a foot across, yet you actually do not believe that, you believe that it is very big.
    • Tgus najes perceptual appearances a half-way house to doxa.
  • There are two more arguments.
    • Belief involves being convinced, which animals cannot be.
    • Belief involves being open to persuasion, which requires reason.
  • The Stoics are very similar to Aristotle, they deny animals reason and beliefs, and expand perceptual content.
  • Sorabji is not convinced by the argument that a lekton is defined as corresponding only to a rational appearance, to the appearance of a rational being, as opposed to an animal.
    • Propositions are here being defined by reference to a sufficient condition.
    • What subsists in accordance with the appearance enjoyed by a rational being

Sorabji spends some time discussing the views of Stoics and Epicurians that I’m not specifically interested in because I’d like to know about Aristotle and perception.

  • He’s presented Aristotle as a catalyst in the debate on how perception relates to other capacities of the mind, particularly belief and reason.
    • These debate was made urgent by his deinal of these capacities to animals.
    • The debate necessitated the expansion of perception and how it relates to other capacities of the mind.
  • From this, Sorabji draws a general conclusion about Aristotle’s philosophy of mind.
    • Aristotle does not try to reduce perception to things at a different level such as physiological states or behavior, or some performance of functions.
    • Rather, he realtes it to capacaties at the same level, such as belief reason, appearance, memory, experence, and concept formation.
  • Sorabji adds that he thinks Aristotle’s relation of sense-perception to other capacities would be seen by him as throughing light on the formal cause of perception, not the material cause.
  • This brings Sorabji to the second part of his work, in which he argues that commentators have been looking in the wrong place for information about the physical process of perception.

Section II

  • There are a controversial set of Aristotelian phrases.
    • In perception, the sense-organ becomes like the thing perceived.
    • In perception, is potentially such as the thing perceived already, and recieves the form of the thing perceived without matter.
    • Sorabji has taken these phrases to refer to the material cause of perception, it’s physiological process.
  • Sorabji thinks that all three phrases refer to the physiological process and the ‘reception of form’ phrase is unclear.
  • Within academia, the reactions have been varied to this.
    • It has been rejected to support the functionalist interpretation.
    • Among those who disagree, some think that perhaps people receive “vibrations” as “coded messages” as opposed to an actual color.
      • This makes “recieving color” in the sense of “recieving form without matter” synonymous with to become aware of color.
    • Disagreement is widespread, however.
  • Sorabji thinks all of these interpretations are flawed, but particularly Burnyeat’s, because it is “the most daring and the most argued.”
  • Burnyeat endorsed the Christian interpretation
    • Evidently, there is no physiological process at all needed for the eye to see.
    • It is just a brute fact that animal matter is capable of awareness.
    • This is why Aristotle’s philosophy of mind is no longer credible.
      • It turns the matter of animals into something that is impregnated with counciousness, whereas we are bound the Descarte’s conception of matter, which is distinct from awareness.
  • Sorabji has three initial disagreements with this interpretation.
    1. The position is not particularly Christian.
    2. Aristotle can not be making a physiological process unnecessary to sense-perception.
      • De Anima holds that every mental process requires a physiological process.
    3. Aristotle’s theory comes out prosaic and commonsensical.
      • If we want a bizzare theory of awareness, we should look to Descartes.
      • On the other hand, the coloration of eye-jelly is tame by comparision.

Section III

  • With the literal coloration process defended, Sorabji brings in its historical significance.
    • In Section I, it was shown that Aristotle had plenty to say about what we should call the intentional object of perception.
    • There is the idea of intentional inexistence, which is given well by the metaphor:
      • If I inherit a fortune, the fortune must exists to be the object of my inheritance.
      • If I hope for a fortune, the fortune need not exist outside my mind in order to be the object of my hopes.
    • Even in sense-perception, the square shaps I may represent some scene as containing need not really exist in the external scene.
  • But where did he find the idea of an intentional object expressed in
    Aristotle?

    • In the physiological doctrine of form received without matter.
      • Brentano interpreted that doctrine as meaning that the object in sense perception is not, or not only, physically present in the observer, but present in the object, as an object of sense-perception.
  • This interpretation was only made possible by a long history of distortions,
  • The result of this is a theory in which hot, cold, fluid, etc …, the reception of form is no longer understoord to be a physiological process.
  • Brentano’s idea of intentionality was lent the authority of Aristotle, but only through the distrotios of commentators.
    • We can alse see the value of getting clear on the physiological interpretation which I have argued Aristotle originally intended.
    • Every commentator reconstructed Aristotle differently.

‘De Anima II 5‘ by M.F. Burnyeat

  • This is a close scrutiny of De Anima II 5.
  • Questions:
    1. What can be learned from so long and intricate a chapter?
    2. What can the chapter, properly read, teach use about some widely debated issues in Aristotle’s theory of perception?
  • Burnyeat argues that these points are wrong:
    1. That when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming like the object perceived
      • The assimilations he has in mind is ordinary alteration, like when fire heats the surrounding air.
    2. That this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form.
  • The point of *De Anima II 5% is to introduces the distinctions between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality.
  • He pays special attentions to issues of text and translations.

Introduction

  • The negative message of II 5: this is the chapter in which Aristotle infotrms us of his view that, although perceiving is traditionally thought to be a case of being affecxted by something, it is only a refined sense of being affected or altered that this is true.
    • In the ordinary sense of these terms they signify the loss of a quality and its replacement by another.
    • This is not what happens in perception.
  • De Anima II 5 is the chapter in which Aristotle expressely denies that perceiving is the sort of alteration or chage of quality which a clod thing undergoes when it is warmed or a green thing when it is colored red.
  • Sorabji defined has defended and continues to an interpretation where perception is an ordinary qualititative alteration that would be observable by scientists.
    • On this account, what goes on inside the organ is an alteration, a replacement.
    • It is of the same kind as the alterations that occur outside when a cold thing is warmed or a green thing is colored.
    • The object is that this sort of alteration that in II 5 Aristotle contrasts with the sort that perceiving is, where the altered state is not lost but preserved.
  • The positive claim is harder to grasp.
    • What sort of alteration is perception if it is not physical?
  • One possibility is suggested by details of Aristotle’s account of sense organs.
    • Aristotle will sy that the alteration is taking on of a color by something transparent.
  • This cannot be true, II 5 says nothing about the netruality of the sense organ.
  • There are some questions so familiar to scholars that they rarely stop to ask:
    1. What are they doing here?
    2. How, in detail, do they contribute to the final result?

A preliminary lusis

For P to perceive A, P and A must be unlike to begin with, so that A can affect P (because of the unlikeness between them) and make P like itself. The perceiving is an assimilation in which P becomes like A.

Conclusion

  • Perception is alloisis tis in the alienans sense, an “alteration of a sort”
    • An alteration form which you cannot expect every thing you would normally expect from alteration.
    • You cannot expect the perceiver to be really altered, really reddened in the eye.
      • Seeing red is not at all like a case of interal bleeding.
    • You cannot even expect the alterations of perception to take time, like ordinary changes do.
  • But the term has not “lost all connection” with the lessons of other physical works.
    • You can expect this type of alteration to be caused by a sensible quality, which determines the qualitiative character of the effect in the perceiver in such a manner that the perceiver is in some new sense assimilated to it.
    • To see a red object is to be reddened by it in a way.
    • To feel the warmth of a fire is to be warmed by it, bit not in the way the coled room or your chilled hands are warmed by it.
  • What are these new ways of being reddened and warmed?
    • II 5 does not say.
  • In his study of II 7-8, he argues that according the Aristotelian theory of perception the effect that colors and sounds have on the relevant sense-organ is the same as their effect on the medium.
    • Suppose Aristotle sees a red object.
      • The effect of the red color is “quasi-alteration”.
    • Neither the medium nor the eye turns red, but red appears through the medium at his eye.
    • All scientists observing an eye would see is the red object seen or the flesh around the transparency.
      • Transparent stuff is the ideal material base for a second potentiality which is to be preservered.
  • All that happens when you see red is that a person is “appeared to redly.”
    • This gives the sense in which he is reddened by the red object, and comes to be like it.
    • The object’s redness appears, bringing about awareness of red.

Two controversial morals

  • The Sorabji interpretation combines two claims:
    1. That ordinary alteration is what Aristotle requires for perception
    2. That its role is to stand to awareness as matter to form.
  • There are those that defend the thesis that Aristotle’s psychology is an ancient version of what modern philosophers call the functionalist solution to the mind-body problem.
    • For the solution itself, as a solution suited to modern physics for the mind-body problem bequethed to use by Descartes.
    • Aristotle’s account of the soul-body relation cannot be ressurected to help in the modern war against Cartesian dualism because Aristotle’s pyschology is designed to be the crowning achievement of his physics.
      • His physics is irretrivably dead and gone.

‘The Spirit and the Letter: Aristotle on Perception’ by Victor Caston

  • Richard Sorabji claimed in a footnote that Aristotle thought perception was a physiological process and this has sparked some contreversy.
    • The sense organ “literally takes one” the perceptible quality of the object.i
    • This was intended to be a straightforward reading.
  • Burnyeat began forming a paper aimed at refuting this position.
    • On this reading, no physiological process occurs.
    • Perception is purely a “spritual change” on this reading.
  • The stakes of this issue are high.
    • How psychologtical phenomena fit into a natural world for Aristotle.i
    • On a spiritualist reading, perceiving is not grounded in anything fur ther, but instead constitues a basic form of interaction with a world.
      • We can no longer accept this according to Burnyeat.
  • Sorabji’s footnote is thrity years old. > Either Burnyeat’s view is right or Sorabji’s is, and Sorabji’s isn’t > Burnyeat

A Budget of Interpretations

  • It is impossible to access whether this is exhaustive.
    • Much less which is true
    • That is, without a precise formulation of both.
Literalisms
  • Literalism is Sorabji’s position.
    • We are aware of out seeing because we are aware of our visual organ.
    • A “literal taking on of color.”
    • If something genuinely takes on a perceptible quality, such as violet, then it should be possible to observe this.
    • We “replicate” the object in our body.
    • The sense organ “is potentially what its object actually is.”
  • This only concerns the perception of “proper” perciptbles.
    • Qualities such as “white” or “sweet.” > Primitive Literalism: If a subject S comes to perceive a > perceptible quality F at time t, then S literally takes on > the quality of F in the relevant organ at t.
    • It is intentionally weak, only stating the necessary conditions of perceiving, of coming to perceive.
    • It is possible to take this a reductionist and ascribe to type-identical perception.
  • What does it mean to literally take on a perceptible quality?
    • Aristotle insists that the sense organ is tranformed by the action of the perceptible quality. > Fundamentalism: If a subject S comes to perceive a perceptible quality > F in the relevant organ at t, such that the organ will be F in the same > way that the perceived object if F, in virtue of having the same material > composition.
    • Aristotle holds that the color of objects is determined by the proportion of black and white at their surface.
      • Thus, when you look at a wisteria plant, the amount and distribution of tranparent material in my eye jelly, anbd hence the amount of “earth and fire”, will change so as to exhibit the corresponding proporitions of the wysteria.
  • This is not how Sorabji understand literalism.
    • He believe that the eye’s material disposition does not become like the material disposition underlying the color in the visible object.
      • Instead, the eye jelly will be col9ored in a similar way to other transparent bodies, such as the sea,
    • Instead, the sea has only extrinisic color (or something … ).
  • On Sarabji’s view, there needn’t be any change in the organ’s material disposition at least not of the sort that Fundamentalism demands, > Latitudainarianism: If a subject S comes to perceive a perceptible > quality F at time t, then S literally takes on the quyality F in the > relevant organ at t, even if it does not come to have the same underlying > material disposition and so does not come to be F in the same way the > object perceived is F.
    • Sorabji still considers this to be a physiological change.
    • Spiritualism is distinct from this: > Receving the form of something just means becoming like it in form. So, > recevinging the form of something without its matters means becoming like it in > form but not becoming like it in matter.
    • In Byrnyeat’s view, like Sorabji’s, there is no change in the underlying material qualities.
  • There is an iota of different.
    • Burnyeat’s view, the eye jelly is only ‘visible a way and coloured in a way, whiout realing being colored and, in consequence, without undergoing a real alternation.’
  • On Sorabji’s view, the color predicates apply to the eye jelly in the same sense that they do to solid objects.
  • Burnyeat denius what Sorabji affirs. > Canonical literalism: If a subject S comes to perceive a perciptible > quality F at time t, then S literally takes on the quality F in the > relevant organ at time t, such that it becomes true to say the organ is > F at t in the same sense that perceptible object is F.
    • This thesis also captures what is come to Fundamentalism and Latitudinarianism.
‘As Matter to Form’
  • Burnyeat rejects Canonical Literalism.
    • His position is “richer.”
  • These formulations have left open the exact nature of the relation between perceiving and the literal taking on of a perceptible quality.
    • He explicitly rejects the reductive claim made by Thomas Slakey, that these events are type identical.
  • Sorabji believes that the point Aristotle is making at the end of De Anime 2.12 when he claims that “smelling is something else besides the process of being afftected by odor. Perceptions is a phgysiological process, but it is more that that.

Chalcedonian orthodoxy: Perception has two natures, which are inseparable and irreducible, related to each other as matter to form: it is neither a purely material change nor a purely formal one, but rather ‘a logos in matter.’

  • Burnyeat rejects thigs, but he does this by arguing for a stronger position.
  • Rejecting this need not cut all connection between matter and body.

Monophysitism: Although perception is a physical and bodily change, which requires certain standing metaerial conditions, there is *no underlying physiological change * in perception and hence none that is related to it as matter.

  • This position does not yet tell us what does occur in perception, and doesn’t properly constitute a form of spritiualism.
Spiritualisms

It is impossible for the same thing to undergo contrary changes in so far as it is undivided during an undivided period of time. For if it is sweet, then perception undergoes change in this way, as does understanding, while if it is bitter in the contrary way, and if white in a different way … and it it is impossible for it to be white and black at the same time, so that is cannot bear their forms either, if perception and understanding are this sort of thing.

High church spiritualism: If a subject S comes to a perceptible quality F at time t, then S takes on F spirituall in the relevant organ at t – the quality F comes to have interntional being in the organ , even if does not come to have natural being- so that it need not be true to say organ is F at t in just the same sense that the perceptible object is F.

Another way out?

Against New Age Spiritualism

The Argument from Extraordinary Alterations
The Argument from the Efficacy of Sensibilia
The Argument from Anachronism
The Argument from Silence
The body always Undergoes Something
The Organ’s Qualities Affect Sensitivity
The Eye;s Moisture is Affect by Visible Objects
Activities ‘Common to Body and Soul’
Aristotle vs. Empedocles

Against Canoical Literalism

A Disanalogy between Perception and Understanding?

An Analogical Reading

Receving Form with the Matter
Phantasia and Understanding
Phantasia and Proportions
Perceptible Qualities and Proportions

Conclusions

  • It should be plain from the opening survey that there is an alternative.
    • We are not confined to two dominant parties.
    • Aristotle thinks that there is some physiological change in perceptions.
    • That is just what it is form a form to be recived wihtout the matter.
    • For Aristotle, proporitions prive the relvent, information being feature in a range of cases.
      • In exaplaining how we can think of certain things, he appeals to the proportions of the underyling representations, and in account for the quality-space of proper perceptibles, he likewise appeals to propoitions.
      • By exemplifying the same proportions as the perceptible quality perceived, but in a different set of contrary quyalities, the sense organ can come to be relevantly like the perceptible quality, without replicating it.
  • Sorabji’s Latitudinarianism comes extremely close to this view.
    • He also insists on an underlying physiological change in all perceptions.
      • This consists in exemplifying the defining ratio of the perceptible quality in question.
    • He denies that the proporitions of material elements in the porgan change in such a way that quality F is exemplified in the same way that it is in the object.
      • The main difference is that this results in another instance of the same perceptible qualit, such that it will be true to say that the organ F in just the same sense as the object, along with any of its consequences, such as observability.
  • If Aristotle is opposed to replics in cognition as a general rule, this would have to be jettisoned.
    • All Sorabji has to lose is Canonical Literalism.

Conclusion