Custom, Abstraction, and Sensing Our Own Sensing (De Anima III, ch. 2)

Orientation #

He begins in the middle of a point from Book III ch. 1 (the reason why the common sensibles are known by more than one sense) and says “let’s turn now to chapter two.” He looks ahead: after the central sense Aristotle will ask whether that is reason, then treat emotion and will. He ends by saying the stronger argument for an inward sense, from sensing the difference between white and sweet, is still to come. The previous class treated Book III ch. 1 (no senses beyond five, common sensibles known accidentally through the proper senses).

The class, in order #

1. Language, custom and travel (“English seems the natural way of speaking”) #

Point: what is never separated in our experience we cannot easily separate in thought.

• If everyone spoke English, “to speak and speak English would be the same thing”; travelling and hearing French or German makes the distinction between language and English clear.
• His high-school French class: “how do the French kids ever learn this?”; the teacher on French idioms (Greek idios, private): “don’t fight it, just accept it.”
• Scripture’s “I am”: Thomas reads Christ’s “I am” as “I am who is”, but in English one says “It’s me”; Goethe: you don’t understand your own language until you learn another — you don’t see what is peculiar to it.
• Adjective before the noun (English) vs. after (Latin, Greek): “man white” sounds unnatural but the order is arbitrary.
• “Travel broadens”: its original meaning is that meeting different customs lets you separate what belongs to man as such from what belongs to an Englishman as such.
• The Paston letters (14th c.): parents beating a daughter daily until she would marry the rich old man, and historians insisting they were not cruel parents — customs of another age; likewise Near-Eastern customs regarding women surprise us and ours surprise them. Since the world is now united in place, one must “travel in time.”
• C. S. Lewis on reading the ancients: their mistakes are not ours (flat earth, eternal moon) and cannot take us in; the mistakes customary in our own age we will never recognise if we live only in our age. He thinks Lewis “could be stronger.”

2. The general principle behind Aristotle’s reason (“things that are never separated in your experience”) #

Point: Aristotle’s reason about the common sensibles exemplifies something more general — reason’s difficulty separating things never separated in experience.

• The Tempest: Miranda, put on a boat as a child, knows man only through her father; when the young man appears on the shore (“O brave new world”) she is struck — she had not separated man from old man, as a small child associates man with someone in his prime.
• Applied to the text: if we had only sight we could hardly separate surface (length and width) from colour; because we know shape and surface by touch without colour, and by sight without hardness, we can separate them from both. “You don’t realize how difficult it is for our mind to separate those.”
• The other abstraction, universal from singulars, likewise needs more than one particular: if the only quadruped were the dog, quadruped = dog; the sun, being unique, is a case where the general must be separated from one particular.
• A black man in darkest Africa would take blackness as part of being human; his mother’s Minnesota town with no blacks — “go home and wash your face”; people scrubbing a black man in a tub. Obvious confusions, but they show “how kind of weak our mind is.” One-eyed or three-eyed people on another planet, a three-legged man: we might have no reason to change our notion.

3. Custom in ways of thinking: one method taken for the only one (“men like to proceed in the way”) #

Point: the same weakness shows in method — Aristotle says men like to proceed in the way to which they are accustomed (he says “we’ll see that in the second book of wisdom”).

• Faculty committees: the economist, mathematician, sociologist, philosopher each approach the same problem their own way (the sociologist proposing a word count of Thomas; experimental scientists wanting experimental proof).
• Claude Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (c. 1860s, still reprinted, his copy a Harvard translation): three parts — general description of the experimental method, the method in biology, examples from his own physiology. His account of the method is good, but his comparison with philosophy and theology is “almost laughable”: the scientist has (1) an idea/hypothesis, (2) deduction of predictions, (3) checking them; the philosopher has only the idea and the reasoning, never checks; the theologian has only ideas and does not reason. A man so immersed in one method that it is the only way of thinking completely.
• Heisenberg: entering a new area of physics we need not give up the attempt to understand, but “may have to learn a new meaning of the word understanding” — even within physics the way of understanding differs between mechanics, quantum theory, relativity.
• Liberal education, as opposed to highly specialised education, introduces many kinds of knowledge and ways of thinking, so one is “not enslaved to one method” — otherwise one is like Descartes seeking a mathematical way everywhere, or Bernard the experimental method; 20th-century theology imitating the experimental method; Cassirer’s Philosophy of the Enlightenment: the Enlightenment tried to make Newton’s method the method of all knowledge; Lord Kelvin quoted in Brother Richard’s high-school physics book: if it is not measurable it is not scientific.
• Thomas: people brought up where everyone holds the Catholic faith almost think it is known by natural understanding.
• Summary of what the example shows: (a) knowing the same thing in different ways/by different kinds of knowledge; (b) the difficulty of separating what is never separated in experience.
• Aside: marriage shows that households do things differently; intermarriage within one family would never let you compare ways of doing things.

4. Chapter two: the two acts to be examined (“we sense that we see and hear”) #

Point: Aristotle now examines two kinds of sensing that do not seem to belong to the five outward senses; from the first he reasons hesitantly to an inward sense, from the second definitely.

• First (par. 274): “since we sense that we see and hear, it is necessary to sense that one sees either by sight or by a different sense.” Not seeing and hearing universally as reason treats them, but this seeing — my seeing this painting, my hearing Mozart’s music, my tasting this food. Thomas is fairly definite that an inward sense is needed; Aristotle is not so definite here.
• Second (bottom of p. 29, par. 285-286): we discriminate in a sense-like way not only sweet from bitter (taste) and green from red (sight) but white from sweet. Sight does not know sweetness, taste does not taste white; can the two together know the difference? Compare: if I have heard only Mozart and you only rock and roll, can we know the difference together, or must one man hear both? So an inward sense to which they come back to a common centre — the common sense, which he prefers to call the central sense, since “common sense” suggests the common sensibles or ordinary good sense.
• Order of the book: from outward inward — outward senses, central sense, then whether that is reason (reason is something different), then emotion and will, “even more inward.”

5. Aside on “heart” and the order from more known to less known (“is it easier to know somebody’s mind or his heart”) #

• “Heart” in Scripture and speech: sometimes the will/desiring power (“my heart’s not in it”), sometimes knowing powers (“learn it by heart” = memory, an internal sense); always something within. The will is more within than reason; reason is closer to the senses.
• Reflected in the Trinity: the Son proceeds by God understanding himself, the Holy Spirit by God loving himself; the Spirit’s name is common (spirit, holy — “holy, holy, holy”), and the Spirit is harder to understand than the Word.
• Student: one communicates what is in the mind, and must also be willing to communicate what is in the heart. He: Scripture says man knows not whether he is worthy of love or hate — we cannot be sure of having charity as we can of having faith; my thoughts are clearer to me than my intentions (teaching out of love of truth or out of vanity; the saints’ “purity of intention”).
• So the order of treatment runs from more known to less known: plant powers more outward than sense powers, outward senses more outward than reason, knowing powers more outward than desiring powers.

6. The first act: sensing my seeing, and the dilemma (“do I sense my hearing”) #

Point: sensing that we see is a particular, concrete awareness, not understanding what seeing is; the puzzle is which power has it.

• Examples of the concrete awareness: pleasure in hearing Mozart inclining me to hear more; the wine connoisseur enjoying the sensation of the wine; the restful Hudson School landscapes — I sense my seeing of them.
• The dilemma (274-277):
  1. I cannot sense my seeing without in some way sensing what is seen (seeing is not knowable without something seen).
  2. So whatever senses the seeing must also sense the colour. Hence either two powers know colour (eye and the inward power — redundancy: “two will be of the same”), or the same power knows both colour and its own seeing (“the same of itself”).
  3. (276) If no power knows its own act but another does, you need another power for that act, and so to infinity; to avoid this, some sense must know itself — so better to say it in the first case.
  4. (277) Difficulty: sight’s defining object is colour; if something sees the seeing, the first seeing thing must have colour — and seeing is not a common sensible either.
• Two ways out he says Aristotle suggests: (a) two kinds of seeing, one sensing colour, one sensing seeing; (b) sensing seeing is in a way sensing colour, since senses are acted on by their objects and in a way become them — the eye is in a way coloured, though not originally.

7. The two ways out (“we discern by sight both darkness and light”) #

• (278) Sensing by sight is not one: even when we do not see, we discern darkness and light, “but not in the same way.” His reading: waking in the night you know your lack of seeing; other times you are aware of seeing. “Did you hear something?” — sometimes you are aware of your hearing, sometimes not; the unfamiliar sounds of a new house on the first night (wind, settling) that you later never notice.
• (279) The thing seeing is “as if coloured”: each sense organ is receptive of the sensible without the matter (end of the last book), so sensations and imaginings remain in the organ in the absence of the sensibles — he closes his eyes and the black remains “kind of inside me”; the “aftertaste” of wine, an obscure question he sets aside.

8. The act of the sensible and of the sense are one (“acting upon and undergoing”) #

Point: sensible-in-act and sense-in-act are the same reality, differing in definition; this is the acting-upon/undergoing doctrine of natural philosophy.

• Are my kicking you and your being kicked two realities? my head depressing the pillow and the pillow being depressed? my pushing the glass and its being pushed? my lifting the book and its being lifted? No — one reality, defined differently: the movement viewed as from me into the glass is pushing; viewed as in the glass from me, being pushed. A student’s qualification: unless you mean just the movement of the arm. Since sensing is an undergoing, the colour acting on my eye and its being seen are the same.
• “Being is not the same”: his gloss — Aristotle’s “being” here is a contraction of “what it was to be,” i.e. definition.
• Sound in act and hearing in act come together when what can hear is at work and what can sound sounds: one is sounding (acting upon), the other hearing (undergoing). Naming: student asks whether the radio playing to an empty room is “sounding”; he thinks Aristotle means sounding as actually acting on the ear — “stimulating” the organ, which is the same as my sensing. “Audible” would name it too much in potency.
• (280) Acting upon and undergoing are the same thing as motion — hence Thomas’s question why they are separate categories: they name the thing with reference to something outside (extrinsic denomination), while motion as such is put in the category it is in (where, quality). Since the act of the active is in the undergoer, sound-in-act and hearing-in-act are in what is in potency; corollary: the mover need not be moved.
• Twofold sound, twofold hearing, and likewise for the other senses; some pairs have both names (sounding/hearing), in others one member is unnamed: vision named, the act of colour unnamed; tasting named, the act of flavour unnamed.
• Because the acts are one, hearing and sounding in act are destroyed and conserved together; not so in potency — a sense can exist without what can sound and vice versa.

9. The predecessors’ error and the potency/act distinction (“is there sound in the forest”) #

• The earlier students of nature said white and black are nothing without sight, flavour nothing without taste — the moderns repeat it (no sound in the forest without an ear). Aristotle: they failed to distinguish sound in ability from sound in act; in act there is no sounding without hearing, in ability there is — “they spoke simply about what is spoken of not simply.” He compares the earlier discussion of food, like or unlike the fed (unlike at the beginning, like at the end) — not the same distinction, but similar.
• Does food have flavour before you taste it? Tasteable, not tasted; otherwise it would make no difference what you eat or which disc you put on for pleasant hearing. Aside: a saint mixed food with ashes to deny sense pleasure.
• Student: with fire you would not say it is hot in ability when not felt but in act when felt. He: touch may differ from the other senses, since the tangibles “are the differences of body as body” (earlier chapter) and are more in the body before being felt; for sound in ability he does not think Aristotle means the mere clinkable glass, though that is how we would think of it.
• His question: is sound what is heard or what is able to be heard? Student: what is able to be heard. He: Aristotle is distinguishing the two — sensible in ability vs. sensible in act, where “sensible in act” means the sensible’s acting upon the sense, which is the sense’s undergoing and sensing. Already taught in Book II, brought back here for a purpose.

10. Where this leaves the inward sense (“not so altogether clear that the ear cannot hear”) #

Point: the purpose of the doctrine here is that sensing is being sensible — seeing is being coloured, hearing is having sound — so it is not so clear the ear cannot hear its own hearing, since what it hears is sound. “Aristotle’s thinking very subtly about this” and does not force the issue from this act to the necessity of an inward sense; Thomas in other texts sees even this act as requiring one. The stronger argument will be from sensing the difference between the private sensibles of different senses (white and sweet).

His words #

• idiom: from Greek idios, “private”; a way of speaking private to one language.
• travel broadens: original meaning — meeting other customs lets you separate what belongs to man as such.
• private sensibles: [ed.: proper sensibles].
• central sense: his name for the common sense, to avoid confusion with the common sensibles or ordinary “common sense”.
• sensing that we see: awareness of this seeing in the particular, not understanding what seeing is.
• acting upon / undergoing: his translation of activity and passion [ed.: action and passion]; the same reality as motion, differing in definition.
• being (in “being is not the same”): Aristotle’s contraction for “what it was to be” [ed.: essence/definition].
• sounding / hearing; vision (act of colour unnamed); tasting (act of flavour unnamed).
• sensible in ability vs. sensible in act: hearable vs. actually heard; “ability” [ed.: potency].
• extrinsic denomination: being named from what one acts on or is acted on by (the last six categories).
• heart: sometimes the will, sometimes the knowing/inward powers (memory); always something within.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima III.2, handout par. 274-282: sensing that we see; the same sense of sight and colour; the regress; the seeing thing as coloured; darkness and light; act of sensible and sense one, being different; sound and hearing in act; the predecessors on white and black.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima III.2, par. 285-286 (discriminating white and sweet; next); De Anima II, end (sense receives the sensible without matter; tangibles the differences of body as body; food like/unlike the fed).
• Aristotle, “the second book of wisdom” (men proceed as accustomed) — Metaphysics II (inferred).
• Thomas on the categories (why action and passion are distinct from motion); Thomas on Christ’s “I am”; Thomas on those brought up in the Catholic faith.
• Scripture: “man knows not whether he be worthy of love or hate”; Mary’s/Scripture’s use of “heart”.
• Shakespeare, The Tempest; the Paston letters; C. S. Lewis on reading the ancients; Goethe on knowing one’s own language; Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine; Heisenberg on “understanding”; Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment; Lord Kelvin on measurement; Descartes.

His questions #

• What was the original meaning of “travel broadens”? Experience of different customs separates what belongs to man as such from what belongs to one people.
• If the only quadruped we saw were the dog, what would we do? Identify quadruped with dog; several particulars are needed to separate the universal.
• Does my sight know the difference between white and sweet? Does taste? Can the two together? Neither knows both; the question of an inward (central) sense is raised, to be argued later.
• Is it easier to know somebody’s mind or his heart? The mind: we can be sure of faith but not of charity; my thoughts are clearer to me than my intentions.
• Can I sense my seeing the painting without in some way sensing the painting? No — so whatever senses the seeing must also know colour; hence the dilemma of two powers or one.
• Are my pushing the glass and its being pushed two different realities? No, one reality with two definitions (one student: unless you count the arm’s movement).
• Is there sound in the forest without an ear? Yes in ability, no in act; the predecessors spoke simply about what is not simple.
• Does your food have flavour before you taste it? It is tasteable, not tasted; otherwise it would make no difference what you eat.
• Is sound what is heard or what is able to be heard? Student: what is able to be heard; he: Aristotle distinguishes both, sound in ability and in act.
• Is it by my eye that I sense my seeing, or by something within? Left open by Aristotle here (seeing is in a way being coloured); Thomas says an inward sense.