Sensus Communis
We shall not cease from
exploration
And the end of all our
exploring
Will be to arrive where
we started
And know the place for
the first time.
(T.
S. Eliot, 'Little Gidding')
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That
with which people most continuously associate - the
discourse (logos) that orders everything - with this they are at
variance; and what they encounter every day seems strange to them.
Although
the discourse is shared (xunou),
most people live as if they had a private understanding.
The person who speaks
with understanding (xun nooi)
must insist upon what is shared (xunoi)
by all, as a city insists upon its law.
(Heraclitus, DK 72, 2, 114)
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THE ROLE OF SENSUS COMMUNIS IN
ARISTOTLE, THOMAS AQUINAS, LOCKE AND KANT
a NICE thesis!!! by Albert Ichiro Suzuki
https://open.bu.edu/bitstream/handle/2144/6318/Suzuki_albert_1952_web.pdf?sequence=1
A.
The Inner and the Outer
Philosophy [for the early
Greeks][1] consisted in two main divisions:
(a)
Epistemology (logos tes epistemes), the doctrine of knowing,[2]
and
(b)
Ontology (logos ton ontos), the science of that which truly is.[3]
Of these, the latter, [Ferrier
maintains,] comes first. Human reflection looks outward before it looks inward
and consequently cosmological inquiries into the nature of the physical world
preceded inquiries into the way in which knowledge of the physical world is acquired.
[....] In early Greek thought, [....] cosmological inquires centered around the attempt to discover a "material principle" or "cause" from which every living thing (i.e., animated things; the concept of which involves the animal kingdom as well as the vegetable kingdom [4]) and nonliving thing originated. But gradually epistemic problems came into prominence among Greek thinkers, and it may be said that Socrates was the first who set the current of Greek thought definitely in this direction. [??? – Parmenides? Heraclitus?]
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1. The term epistemology
which derives from two Greek words of episteme (knowledge) and logos (science)
was used for the first time by Ferrier. [Ferrier, James F., Institutes of Metaphysics [IOM]. Edinburough
& London: W. Blackwood, 1856.]
2. Ferrier, IOM, 48.
3. Ferrier, IOM, 47.
4. Lucretius and Cicero
distinguished animus (mind) from anima (life or the living). Lucretius, De rerum natura, III, 133-160; Cicero, Tusc., I, 19-22.
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The study of the
cognitive powers was first attempted by the early Greek materialists who tried
to interpret the physical world in its relationship to the subject. The soul had been conceived by the early
philosophers as the cause of life in the body
and also, after they began to reflect on the subjective powers, as the cause of sensation.
Such notions that there
are visible things such as eidola which flow off from an object, similar
in shape to the objects from which they flow and fall into the eyes of the
persons seeing, resulting in sight, were held by Leucippus and Democritus. All
sense experiences were reduced to the atomic
sensationalism of actual 'touch' of soul-atom and atoms of the external objects.[2]
1. It is said that Alcmaeon of Crotona distinguished sensibility from sense-perception (aisthanesthai) from intelligence (to eunienai), and to have confined the possession of the latter to human beings. cf. Beare.
2. Aristoteles, Sens., 442b.
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This atomic
interpretation of the inner-outer relationship was helpful for the physical
explanation of sense-experience in space. But it could not solve the
temporal aspect of psychic phenomena such as the preservation and reproduction
of images acquired by the individual sense-organ. This process requires
much greater and more complex activity of the mind which combines or
discriminates those images. Plato
was the first great exponent of the rationalistic method in this field. From
the criticism of sense-experience, which is rather relative, he regarded
part of knowledge as dependent upon sensation and part as due to the ideas
that are in the mind from the beginning. For him sensations must be
supplemented and corrected by the ideas innate in the soul,
before they give true knowledge. However, Plato's
ideas were the prototypes of things that exist before objects in the universe
or in the mind of God and were regarded as part of the original endowment of
the soul before any experience. This assumption was the basis for
Plato's moral doctrine as well as his epistemology. He tried to show that the
sensible world was derived from the world of Ideas.
Aristotle, on the other hand, was an empiricist [???]. He
started with a definite observation or group of observations and developed his
general principles from them. And from these series of observation of various
theories as well as of his own “thought experiment,” he separated Platonic modes of apprehension from
the realm of the object of knowledge. According to Hammond,[1] Plato's faculties of the mind "depend upon the
reciprocal relation between subject and object." Though Aristotle's
account of the theoretical activity of the higher faculties of mind is very
meager and not complete in itself, we must admit that he was the first who
tried to describe the Platonic distinction
between animal knowledge
and the rational knowledge
of man in terms of faculties.[2] And it was the combination of the
Platonic doctrine of the relationship of “Being”
and “knowing” and the Aristotelian conception of the
biological powers of the mind that developed into the edifice of the later
Scholastic anthropology of Thomas Aquinas and others. [2]
****************************************************************
1. Hammond, AP, xxvi. Also in xxvii he says, "Plato's entire psychology, in which the soul's parts are separated into existentially distinct units with distinct anatomical organs is ethico-teleologically determined; the soul is a unitary life functioning in distinct modes or faculties. It is a single indivisible mind expressing itself in nutrition, sense-perception, imagination, memory, reasoning.
2. "In some oreatures, as we have said, all of the above mentioned psychic powers are found, in others some of them, and in still others only one. By powers we mean here the powers of nutrition, appetite, sensation, movement in space, and of rational thought." Aristotle, De Anima, 414a 31.
3. Even in the Kantian system, especially in his pre-critical writings, we can observe the influence of Scholastic psychology.
****************************************************************
A. The Conception of Sensus Communis.
The term, sensus communis, is
a translation of koine aisthesis
[1] which was used first by Aristotle for the faculty of synthesis which
was referred to sense. It was the Arabic translators and commentators [2] who
used the term, sensus communis,
which involved the psychical processes, such as imagination, fantasy and
memory.
The sensus
communis is regarded, by Thomas Aquinas, as one
of the powers of the sensus interiores in relation to the powers of Imagination,
memory and sense-judgment (vis
aestimativa), etc. But until Thomas Aquinas
analyzed the connotations of the term, most of the commentators of Aristotelian
psychology interpreted sensus communis in a much wider sense including the whole
psychical processes except the so-called five senses.
It is necessary here to
consider how much of what Aristotle had to say regarding it was to be found in
the speculations of his predecessors. However, since they did not undertake the
discussion of the faculty of synthesis as such, we must satisfy ourselves with stating
the functions which were ascribed by Aristotle to the sensus communis, and seeing how these functions
are dealt with by preceding psychologists.
**********************************************************
1. Aristotle seldom uses
this actual term (cf. 425a 27; 450a 10; 686a 31), often employing equivalents
like primary sense [to proton aisthetikon] and judging
sense [to koinon].
2. Especially Avicenna
(979-l037 A.D.) and Averroes (1126-1198 A.D.).
**********************************************************
To this department of the
mind Aristotle assigned:
(a) the power of discriminating and comparing the data of the special senses,
all of which are in communication with this power;
(b) the perception of the 'common sensibles,' (to koina)
of which the principal are Movement,
Form, Number, Magnitude and Time;
(c) the consciousness of our sensory experiences, i.e., the
power by which we not only perceive, but perceive that we perceive;
(d ) the
faculty of imagination,
i.e., reproductive imagination (to phantastikon);
(e) the faculty of memory
and reminiscence (mneme kai anamnesis)
(f) the affections of sleeping
and dreaming.
As to the conception of
the synthetic faculty [1]
(involved in (a), (b) & (c)) which was not distinctly formulated until we
reach Plato, the interpretations of the Greek “materialists” on sense
perception should be noted.
************************************************************
B. The Background of
Aristotle's Sensus Communis
(l) The Interpretation of Greek
“Materialists”
As mentioned before the
early Greek thinkers who are called philosophici
naturales by the medieval philosophers sought for the principle (arche,
principium) or an elemental substance from which every
living and non-living thing was
composed. Their principles, such as Thales' water, Anaximander's
'boundless' or 'unlimited' (apeiron), were the
principles of all existence - including all living things. Their philosophy is
called “hylozoism,” i.e., the doctrine of the unity of matter (hyle) and life (zoon),[1]
according to to which matter is by nature endowed
with life, and life is inseparably connected with matter.
Probably they might have tried to explain the activity of
human soul from a hylozoistic standpoint, but no further data about the relation of sense perception
and the sensus communis
can be available from the extant fragments of these philosophers.[2]
Some passages of Heraclitus (fifth century B.C.) who held
that all knowledge comes to man “through the
door of the senses,” and Protagoras
(c. 484-411 B.C.) who maintained that the
entire psychic life was made up only of sensations, tell us that
they turned their eyes from the outer world of nature which, according to that,
is nothing but flux, to the inner world which is a receptacle of the relative
experience of the flux coming through the sensation.
The more empirical and
consequently materialistic studies of the mind can be observable in the
theories of Empedocles (c. 490-435 B.C.), Democritus (c. 460-370 B.C.) and a
little later in the writing of Epicurus (c, 341-270 B.C.). They did not doubt the existence of the objects in
the external world which give off from their surfaces, or pores, effluvia
(Empedocles) or which projected faint images, or eidola (Democritus and
Epicurus) to the mind. For them, especially for Epicurus,[1] sensation is irrational (alogos) and therefore does not admit of proof.[3]
In De rerum natura, Lucretius, the
follower of Epicurus, describes his
master's doctrine, in which he explains some of the faculties of the mind
which were attributed to the power of sensus
communis. For Epicurus the fundamental
criterion is sensation (aistheis), "we must keep all our investigations in accord
with our sensations," ''the criteria of truth are the sensations and
concepts and the feelings."[1] Sensation
is the ultimate and only criterion of truth.
You will find that the
concept of the true is begotten from the senses at first, and that the
senses cannot be gainsaid.[2]
Taking it for granted
that sensation transmits to us the notities
veri, how can we interpret the various
sensations given by the different organs as a unity or as a manifold? To
see a street-car coming and to hear its noise are two different experiences
through the two sense organs of ear and eye. Or again
"to see” and "to perceive that I see” are also different experiences.
Epicurus refuted the possibility of sensus communis as the principle or faculty of the synthetic
power of the mind which combines those various sense-experiences received from
the outer senses:
Will the ears be able to
pass judgment on the eyes, or touch on the ears? Or again will the taste in the
mouth refute this touch; will the nostrils disprove it, or the eyes show it
false?[3]
No, because each sense
has its proper faculty set apart from the other; each has its own power.[1] But
if you do not accept communis
sensus, there will be no standard by which we can
reach the truth about hidden things.[2]
In saying sensus communis,
however, Lucretius meant rather the general concept which was first given
through the sensus proprii
(five peripheral senses) and apprehended as unity (which Epicurus called 'anticipation,' prolepsis). He
was not thinking of any independent faculty of sensus
communis in the Aristotelian sense of the word.
For
Epicurus, the image of sight, for instance, after having been perceived by the
eyes, passes on into the mind and is there stored up and can be recalled in the
act of memory. Moreover, when we have had a number of such
images of any one class of things, they
unite in a kind of 'composite photograph'[3] of the object and so form a general conception or 'concept' of
the thing, to which we can refer as a test afterwords.[4]
The reason why Epicurus called this general concept by the name of
'anticipation' is because it enables us to
anticipate the appearance of something and to give it a notion which was
acquired by a series of sensations of things which belong to the same species.
This might be not absolutely true. But it has a
derived truth founded on sense
experiences which are immediate and, therefore, direct truth, though alogos.[1]
The great asset which was
bequeathed to the philosophy of Aristotle by these empirical materialists was the notion of 'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu,'[2] which is peculiarly
shared with the psychology of Stoic
philosophers in their theory of 'tabula rasa.' But they avoided the
argument of how those sensible objects are acquired through senses in our mind
as images or ideas or as concepts. In other words, neither a psychological
study of these faculties of the mind nor an epistemological
study of the conditions or forms or sense-perception were done by these
materialists.
In short, we can point
out some of their views concerning sensus communis as follows:
(a) They did not
discuss the faculty of synthesis by which the data of sense are combined
and distinguished, by which we are conscious of our mental acts, and by which
we imagine and remember.
(b) They did not draw
any dividing line between sensibility (aisthesis) and
intellect (nous) as psychical entities. But a bipartite division of the
soul: of to logikon (which is placed in
the thorax) and to alogikon which is
distributed all over the body), in Democritus, seems to have anticipated the
tripartite division of Platonic psychology.
c) Their notion of phantasia is not the power of reproduction, but
merely the 'presentative' faculty, by which things
appear, or present themselves, to us in ordinary perception. Democritus even held
that the 'secondary qualities' (as they were called by Locke) have no objective
existence: they are only affections of our sensibility according as it is
qualitatively altered.[3]
*********************************
1. Bailey,
GAE, 384.
2. Aristotle, De anima 432a 7. Also
"sense
is receptive of sensible forms apart from their matter, as wax
receives the imprint of the signet-ring apart from the iron or gold of which it
is made.”
3. Aristotle, De anima, 424a
17ff.
***************************************
Aristotle
A. Development of the
Conception of “the Common.”
The notion of “the
Common” (to koinon)
in Plato's psychology was enlarged by Aristotle to the conception of “common sensibles”[1] to signify a specific aspect in the
psychological process of sense-perception. For Aristotle, the act of
sense-perception is not completed in the peripheral five sense-organs, but only
in the “central sense" (to kurion aistheteron). These
are five peripheral organs
of sense: eye, ear, tongue and throat, nose, skin and flesh. These are stimulated by objects in the external world which by contact with
the organ work some change
(alloiosis) in it.[2] The contact
is effected
************************
1. Aristotle, De Anima, 418a, 425a 12, 426a-427a; Somn., 455a 21; De long., 467b
28; Sens., 449a; De mem.,
450a; De juv., 467b.
2. It was in this sense
that later medieval thinkers named these peripheral organs of sense as
"exterior” or “external”because of this
immediate cont”act with the objective world. But
Aristotle employs, more faithfully to his doctrine of psychological faculties,
as “special sense” (idia aisthesis) which has translated into Latin as “sensus proprius.”
Both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas employ both singular and plural forms for the
expression of proper sense, exterior sense, interior sense, but not for common
sense, although Aristotle uses the term, common sensibles
in plural.
***********************
through a medium which transmits a
stimulus from the sense-object to the perceiving organ, and the change which
the stimulus works in the peripheral organ is further transmitted by the blood
or sense-duct to the sensorium (central organ).
On examining the
psychology of Aristotle, three factors are to be taken into account in each
stage of sense-perception:
(a) the organ,
(b) the object or thing sensed,
(c) the medium of transmission.
In the case of visual
perception these factors are the eye, the thing seen and the diaphanous or
translucent medium, whether the latter be liquid or atmospheric. [1]
To each of the individual
senses belongs the functions of apprehending a particular quality (idion aistheton).[2] In vision, only color is sensed; in hearing, only
sound; in smell, odor; in taste, flavor and in touch, the qualities of body as
body (hardness, etc.). These are all sensation-qualities, but
they are not percepts (i.e., the perception of the object
as a whole). By means of sight, e.g., we have the sensation of' green,
but not an olive itself. An
olive is a percept, green is a sensation. An olive is made up of several
ideas, of hardness, taste, color, form, magnitude, etc., and these are unified
in a particular thing and they constitute it a single concrete object,
"olive." The peripheral organs of touch, taste and sight furnish us
with several ideas or qualities belonging to a concrete thing. Thus each single sense judges (krinein) of its
proper object and is not
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1. This physical
explanation of vision and other sense-organs is almost entirely bequeathed from
Atomistic views of Empedocles and Democritus. Only their material theory did
not really touch the problem which they had set out to solve; it establishes a
connection between object and percipient, but it does not really tell us what thought
and sensation, as we know them, are. cr. Bailey, GAE,
164.
2. De anima, 418a 10ff.
********************************************
deceived as to
the fact that there is a color or a sound. [1] But in order that these various qualities are
brought together for knowledge and seen to inhere in a single object, it is necessary to
think of some unifying function
which is called by the names of the central or
common sense; it is only then that a percept
is formed in our mind. The function of sensation,
therefore, belongs to the peripheral or external senses in so far as they
mediate the qualities of an external object to the inner sensorium
or common sense. And perception[2] is one of the
functions of the central sense.
B. The Common Sensibles.
In the second chapter of
De Anima[3], Aristotle describes three different
sensible objects: two of which are perceived in themselves or directly. While the third is perceived per accidens
or indirectly. Of the first two the one is the special object of a
particular sense, the other an object common to all the senses. i.e., the object of perception, or common sense. And he
employs the term "common sensibles" (koina aistheta) for the objects of common sense.
According to Aristotle,
these common sensibles are (i) motion, (ii) rest, (iii) number, (iv) figure or form, (v)
size or magnitude and (vi) time. These qualities are not the special
objects of any single sense, but are common to all.
*********************************************************
1. De an., 418a., 410a. 41Gb and 429a, 432a.
2. Sens., 449a 3ff.
s. De an., 418a 7ff .
4. De an., 418a 17, 426a 14-30; De mem.,
450a 10.
*********************************************************
For example, a particular
motion can be perceived by touch as well as by sight. In De sensu,[1] Aristotle adds
roughness, smoothness, and sharpness and bluntness in solid bodies a the common
function of sight and touch.[2] The statement is quite true of number and
unity:[3] each sense perceives “one” object, and number is made up of units. It
is also true of motion. But magnitude and figure can hardly be said to be
directly perceived except by sight and touch. The fact is that not one of these
common sensibles is perceived by one sense only; and
all the senses, in various combinations, at one time or another contribute to
make them known.
In comparison to
Aristotle's conception of the common sensible Plato's conception of the common
notions (ta koina) which
are put in pairs of 'being' and 'not-being'; 'likeness' and 'unlikeness';
'identity' and
'difference';
'unity' and 'plurality'; the 'odd' and 'even', etc.,[4] indicates that he was
thinking of a much higher structure of mental activity. For Plato these common sensibles are not perceived by sense but directly
apprehended by soul itself - which may be indirectly apprehended by Aristotle's
intellect, though directly by sense.
C. The Functions of the Sensus Communis.
(i) As a power of
apprehending the common sensibles.
*****************************************************
1. De sensu, 442b 5.
2. cf. Locke's primary
qualities: space or extension, figure, rest, and
motion. Locke, ECHU, 158.
3 . De anima,
425a 19ff.
4. Eth. Nic.,
1142a 27; Plato, Theaetetus, l86a.
*****************************************************
As it is shown above, for
Aristotle, the apprehension of "the
common" must be done by sense, because they are sensibles.[1]
And they are not apprehended by the particular senses like sight or touch, but by the common power that is associated with all the
particular senses (tini koino tog aistheterion
apanton)[2]
(ii) As a power of self-consciousness.
We also recognize
particular sensations as belonging to ourselves and can hold them up before our
minds as something known to us. We know that we see. We are conscious that we
see and hear. In other words, we are conscious of a sensation. It is, according
to Aristotle, by means of the central sense. Thus, consciousness [3] comes to
be another function of the common sense.
(iii) As a principle of the unity of
sensation.
As is mentioned above, in
every sense there is a power which is peculiar to it and another power
which it has in common with others, i.e., a kind of common power that is
associated with all the particular senses by virtue of which we are conscious
of our sensing and discriminate sensations from each other. Thus, sensation is unitary and the master-organ of sensation is unitary. [4]
************************************************
1 . De anima,
426b 15. However this argument is falling into petitio
principi. This does not give any proper reasons
why the apprehension of the common must be in the function of sense-perception
rather than in intellectual activity.
2. Somn.,
55a 3. Here Aristotle interprets sleeping and awaking as an affection (pathos)
of this common sense and he attributes common sense to the faculty of sense
rather than to the intellectual power, because sleeping and awaking are found
in all animals . But still this is not a proper reason for assuming that common
sense is a sensitive faculty.
3. De
anima, 425b 12ff; De sens., 455a 15ff .
4. Somn.,
465a.
*********************************************************
However, according to
Aristotle, this does not signify the existence of an independent sense-organ
beside the proper senses, but rather it is a
principle or 'form' which lies under each proper sense, giving them unity and
makes them possible to start their own sensitive activity. It was in
this sense that Aristotle called common sense as “the first sense” (to proton aistheterion)[1] or “the central sense” (to kurion aistherion), and the
faculty of common sense as “the first power of perception” (to proton aisthetikon) or “principle (beginning) of sensation” (arche tes aistheros).[2]
Concerning this point, an explanation of Thomas Aquinas will be adequate:[3]
"The interior sense is not called common by predication, as if it
were a genus, but as the common root (communis radix) and principle of the exterior senses.” This function of the
common sense is very important. Because this is not gained by
the inductive analysis of the common sensibles but
comes to be apprehended as formal condition of all sensitive activity, though
Aristotle did not refer to it.
(iv) As a Discretionis
Principium.
The individual senses
furnish us with color, sound, etc., but
*******************************************************
1. It is in this sense
that Locke employed the term, primary qualities.
2 . Somn ., 456a, 458a,
464a; mem., 450a, 451a.
3. "Sensus interior non dicitur
communis per praedicationem,
sicut genus, sed sicut communis radix, et
principium exteriorum.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologia, I, 78, 4, Resp. ad primum.
*****************************************************
it is not their function to
discriminate, between sweet and white, or to differentiate degrees of bitter.
This is a function of judgment, [1]
and it is ascribed by Aristotle to the common sense. The
discrimination between true and false, between real and unreal in our
perceptions is made not by the peripheral senses, but by the central sense. The
sensation, because it is only a fact and as a sense-process pronounces no
judgment, is always true [2], but when the sensation is predicated of
something and a judgment is expressed, error is possible. It is the
internal or central sense that performs this office of judgment in the share of
perceptual knowledge, and it is, therefore, to
the central sense alone that, strictly speaking, truth and falsehood in this
sphere can be ascribed.[3]
(v) Other Functions of the Sensus Communis.
Further, sleep,[4] imagination,[5]
memory,[6] and dream,[7] in so far as they signify the interruption
of consciousness or the continued life and movement of residual sense-
perceptions, are functions of the sensorium, or central sense.
***************************************
1. De anima, 426b 14ff. cf. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, 78, 4, Ad secunum: “Wherefore the discerning judgment (discretionis principium) must be assigned to the common
sense; to which, as to a common term (sicut ad communem terminum) all
apprehensions or the senses must be referred; and by which, again, all the
intentions of the senses are perceived; as when someone sees that he
sees."
2. De an., 427b 11 ; 428a 12.
3. Thomas Aquinas
distinguished animal judgment (vis
aestimativa sive intentiones) from human reasoning power (vis cogitativa). Sum. theol. I,
78, 4. Respondeo.
4. Somn.,
454a 23; 456a 1.
5. Insomn.,
460b 17.
6. Mem.,
451a 17.
7. Insomn.,
458b 1.
*******************************************
In summarizing these
various functions of the central or common sense, we can point out the
following eight:
(1) The cognition of the "common sensibles," i.e., motion, rest, number, figure,
size, time , etc.;
(2) The unification of the primary sensibles,
or the complete set of sense perception;
(3) Consciousness, or the perception that we
perceive;
(4) The suspension of consciousness, or sleep;
(5) Judgment, in so far as judgment applies to
the comparison, contrast and discrimination of the deliverances of senses;
(6) Imagination, or residual sense-images;
(7) Memory (including reminiscence) or the
voluntary and involuntary reproduction of sensations; and
(8) Its content as the
potentiality of reason.
D. The Perception of Time.
For Aristotle, Time is perceptible. There is no
imperceptible time.[1] In De Sensu he deals
with the problem of the possibility of experiencing two simultaneous sensations
at one and the same moment of time. This is in the discussion of the power of
the fusion of sensations in the sensus communis.
When one perceives one's
self or something else in continuous time, it is impossible for one to be then
unconscious that one is; but if there is in continuous time a moment of such
duration that it is altogether imperceptible, it is evident that one would then
be unconscious of one's own existence, or would not know whether or not one sees and perceives.[2]
*********************************************************
1. De
Sensu, 448B 15.
2. De
Sensu, 448a 20- b 5.
*********************************************************
Thus the perception of
time is closely related with self-consciousness. And he explains that the perception of temporal duration is only possible
in spatial extension or movement or numerical series. Further, he
raised a question about the relation of consciousness and several simultaneous
sensations:
Is it possible that the
sensations be simultaneous in the sense that they are experienced in different
parts of the soul, and not in one indivisible part, though by parts which are
indivisible in the sense of forming a continuous whole?[2]
Here Aristotle enumerates
a series of these questions such as the perception of the different colors in
one object as a whole, or the perception of the same object which comes through
two eyes, etc. [3] And he concludes that there
must be some unitary principle in the soul, whereby it perceives things as
wholes.[4]
And this function is ascribed to the “common sense," where the
various experiences of the individual senses are fused into a whole or the
percept. Thus the notion of “simultaneity”
is closely related with the conception of the synthetic power of the soul.
Thus Aristotle asserts that regardless of the presence of our consciousness,
time as such exists.[5] But the perception of time
itself derives from the combined experiences of perception of the present,
expectation of the future and memory of the past.[6]
**********************************************
1. De
Sensu, 448a 20-b 5.
2. De
Sensu, 448b 18-20.
3. De
Sensu, 448b 21-449a 2.
4. De
Sensu, 449a 11-12.
5. De Sensu, 448b
15.
6. Mem.,
449b 10-15.
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Therefore memory and time are perceived by the same organ.[2] And the organ is the central organ or heart.[3]
Also Aristotle defines
time as the measure or number of motion, but
time cannot exist apart from mind, as number cannot exist apart from
a calculator, and the sole calculator is mind.[4] At
the beginning of De Anima , Chapter Three, he tried to reduce all the
common properties to motion.
All these properties we
perceive by means of motion, e.g., magnitude is perceived by motion. Form is a
sort of magnitude, and rest we perceive from the absence of motion. Number is
perceived by the negation of continuity [...][5]
From these we can
understand the following items based on Aristotle's conception of time:
(1) Time is the
measure or number of motion. And motion
is a fundamental quality of common sensibles.
(2) Time cannot exist apart from mind. When we
perceive something, we perceive it as a present perception or as a past
recollection or as a future expectation. Time cannot be separable from human
consciousness.
(3) There is no imperceptible time, though we can be
unconscious of it.
(4) Time is perceived
by the common sense, because the perception of time is included in
the perception of the common sensibles.
****************************************************
2. Mem.,
449b 10-15.
3. Mem.,
451a 17.
4. Phys., 219a 10; 223a 16; De coelo, 279a 14.
6. De anima, 425a
18-20.
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Conclusion to this chapter.
For Aristotle, the aim of all
science is to form an intelligible universe by discovering the universal in the
particulars – particulars
which are the primary and only substances or existences, but which have no
existence apart from the universal which is their "form" or the class
(kind) of their existence. Such universals
are concepts formed by the intuitive reason on the basis of repeated
"sensation,” which rise to “memory,” and then to "experience,"
of the same kind of thing.
Then how about the conceptions of psychic activities? Are they also the “forms"? But the "forms" are
acquired by those psychic activities. If they are forms, they are the forms
which must be acquired by the same forms. Thus Aristotle's analysis of the
common sensibles leads to the notion of consciousness.
At the same time, the common sensibles can be
perceptible by means of motion, the measure and number of which is, for
Aristotle, time.
Thus he noticed that those three, consciousness, time and the power of sensus communis are
inseparable and acquired by our experience. And, as he tried to define the peripheral
senses by the organic functions, so he sought for the function of sensus communis in the physical
organ. But neither his biological attempt at localizing “sensus
communis” nor that of describing it in the
metaphysical terms, were successful. However, we
cannot deny that his analysis of sensus communis opened a new field in the study of
sense-perception.