ST I q.78 a.4: The Interior Senses (Common Sense, Imagination, Estimative Power, Memory)

Orientation #

He opens by recalling that the previous article treated the outward senses, “the ones that we see from things outside of us,” and turns now to the inward senses, where Thomas is “more complete than Aristotle” in the third book on the soul. He says nothing explicit about next time. The previous class finished the exterior senses (q. 78 a. 3) and the next opens q. 79 on the intellectual powers.

The class, in order #

1. Objection 1: two meanings of “common” (“common is not divided against the”) #

Point: the first objection (the common should not be listed alongside the proper senses) confuses two senses of “common,” which Thomas will separate in the reply.

• Common in predication: “sense” said of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; you would not list “sense” as a sixth, since it is said of each of the five.
• Common as cause: what extends to all, like the common good, or God. The common sense is common as a common origin of the outward senses, or a common terminus they come back to — like the center of a circle common to all radii, whereas the other end of each radius is private to it.

2. Objections 2 and 3: do we need a power beyond the proper senses? (“the eye is much more able”) #

• Obj. 2: for what the proper sense suffices, no interior power is needed; each sense judges its own object, and should also perceive its own act, since the act is a middle between the power and the object — the eye is closer to its seeing than to color, so if it knows color, why not seeing? He notes this is one reason people posit a “central sense”: something that knows the acts of the exterior senses, as if the eye knew color but not seeing.
• Obj. 3: according to the Philosopher, the phantasticum (Greek; Latin imaginatio) and the memorativa are passions of the first sensitive power; a passion is not divided against its subject, so they should not be other powers. Aristotle calls the image a motion caused by sense in act: I look at you, close my eyes, and keep seeing you “in a faded way” — that continuation results from my seeing, so why another power?

3. Objections 4 and 5: estimative and cogitative (“to whom one sense is lacking”) #

• Obj. 4: the understanding depends less on sense than any sensitive power, yet knows nothing not taken from sense (Posterior Analytics I: to whom one sense is lacking, one science is lacking — no ears, no science of music; no eyes, no astronomy or science of color). So much less should there be a sensitive power perceiving intentions the senses do not perceive, the estimative.
  • With a student he glosses the estimative as “something like instinct”: when an animal sees a color and shape and recognizes friend or enemy, it is not because the color or shape as such is painful. Little birds by nature victims of bigger birds crouch when a big bird flies over, though never bitten; the sheep recognizes the wolf without experience. They perceive “something that is not a sense quality.”
• Obj. 5: the act of the cogitative power (“particular reason”) — bringing together and dividing — and of the reminiscent power, “a kind of syllogism to inquire” (he notes Aristotle uses the word syllogism in the book on memory and reminiscence), differ from the acts of estimative and memory no less than the estimative differs from imagination. So either the cogitative and reminiscent are further powers, or the estimative and memory are not other than imagination.
  • Example of reminiscence as near-reasoning: what was I doing at four o’clock last Friday? Lunch with so-and-so, back, library… working back step by step; or trying to place a face or name and suddenly remembering where you know him.

4. Objection 6 and the sed contra: three visions, five powers (“In my mind’s eye”) #

• Augustine, Genesis to the letter, book XII, lays down three genera of vision: bodily (through senses), spiritual (through imagination, phantasia), intellectual (through intellect). Hence, the objection concludes, only one interior power between sense and intellect: the imaginative.
• He illustrates “eye” used for all three: in Hamlet the guards see the ghost with their eyes and Horatio, who takes it for imagination, then sees it himself (bodily vision); Hamlet says “I can see my father now… in my mind’s eye” (memory/imagination); Gregory the Great, “anger disturbs the eye of the soul,” means reason. Three meanings of “see”: with the eye, in memory or imagination, and “understand.” Painting appeals to the eye, fiction to the imagination, philosophy to the eye of the soul.
• Sed contra: Avicenna, “one of the great Arab, Muslim philosophers,” in his book on the soul posits five interior sense powers: common sense, phantasia, imaginative (the Greek and Latin words here used for different things), estimative, memory. Thomas will reduce these to four; he does not think Thomas replies to Avicenna specifically except in the body. He warns that these words are used by us somewhat differently, so “you’ve got to see how Thomas is using them.”

5. Body, first division: receiving vs. retaining (“nature does not fail in necessary things”) #

Argument:

1. Nature does not fail in necessary things; so there must be as many actions of the sensing soul as suffice for the life of a perfect animal, and actions not reducible to one source require diverse powers, since a power is nothing but a proximate source of an operation.
2. A perfect animal must grasp a thing not only present but absent; otherwise, since motion follows apprehension, it would not move to seek what is absent. Tabitha ate breakfast and went straight out to a particular wooded neighborhood to hunt — going to an absent place she could not sense; the cats come up the stairs and turn the corner to the dish they cannot see. Perfect animals, moved by progressive motion, are moved to something absent that they have apprehended.
3. So the animal must not only receive the species of sensibles when present and being moved by them, but retain and conserve them (how else know its master and friends?).
4. “This is the principle Thomas is going to use”: in bodily things receiving and retaining are reduced to diverse principles — the moist receives easily but retains badly, the dry receives with difficulty but retains well. (Perhaps this is what Heraclitus means by “the dry soul is wisest and best”: if you’re all wet you retain nothing; the dry soul “may seem to be a dumb ox in the beginning” but gets things firmly.)
5. Since a sensing power is the act of a bodily organ, there must be one power that receives sensible species here and now and another that conserves them.

6. Body, second division: sensible forms vs. intentions; the four powers (“the bird collects the straw”) #

Argument:

1. If the animal were moved only by what pleases or pains the senses, apprehension of sensed forms would suffice.
2. But the animal, especially the more perfect, seeks or flees things not because they please or displease the senses but because of other utilities or harms: the sheep flees the wolf not for any disagreeable color or shape but “as an enemy to its very nature”; the bird collects straw not because it delights its senses but because it is useful for a nest.
3. So the animal must perceive these intentions (this is harmful, this is useful), which the exterior sense does not perceive; and this perception needs its own source, since perception of sensible forms is from the immutation of the organ, but perception of intentions is not. Result — four powers:

• to receiving sensible forms: the proper senses (the five of a. 3) and the common sense;
• to retaining them: phantasia seu imaginatio — Thomas takes these as synonyms, Greek and Latin (English “fancy” comes from phantasia) — the “treasure” of forms received by the senses: he retains the tastes of licorice, chocolate, Cabernet Sauvignon, orange juice, steak, chicken, and the colors of things; he recognizes violin vs. piano by retained sounds;
• to grasping intentions: the estimative power, which people might rather call instinct;
• to conserving intentions: the vis memorativa. Word caution: we tend to use “memory” for both of Thomas’s retaining powers, and “imagination” for mixing and combining stored images (Thomas explains that later). A sign: memory in animals begins from an intention that something is harmful or suitable, and the ratio of the past, which memory notes, is counted among these intentions — that something is past is not perceived by the senses as such.

7. Man vs. the other animals; Avicenna’s fifth power (“a form imagined of gold”) #

• As to sensible forms, no difference: both are changed alike by exterior sensibles. As to intentions, a difference: other animals perceive them only by natural instinct (“there is that word instinct that we still use”); man by a collatio, a bringing together, “almost reasoning.” So the natural estimative in man is called the cogitative, which finds something by bringing intentions together; hence also “particular reason,” to which the medical doctors assign the middle part of the head. Aside: people still try to map these four onto brain regions (he recalls an article in The Thomist), but “they never quite get down to really saying what’s what”; Thomas gives the medical opinion of his time. Particular reason is in the brain; only universal reason is immaterial. It brings together individual intentions as universal reason brings together universal ones.
• As to memory, man has not only sudden recall of the past like other animals but reminiscence, inquiring quasi-syllogistically according to individual intentions: the courtroom question “where were you on that day, Mister Berquist?”, reconstructed from the Thursday 8:30 and 10 o’clock classes, Joe at the office at three, a beer… He adds his own trick for recalling how Thomas divides St. Paul’s epistles: six is a perfect number, 1-2-3, squares 1-4-9 — “using one image to get to another image.”
• Avicenna’s fifth power, between estimative and imaginative, composes and divides imagined forms — which is how we now use “imagination,” as in “creative imagination,” where poets and artists claim to be creators not imitators. From the imagined form of gold and of a mountain we compose a gold mountain never seen; the children’s fairy tale of the glass mountain the suitor cannot climb, the princess at the top — “I’m really kind of combining the image of mountain with glass.” Thomas: this operation does not appear in other animals, and in man the imaginative power suffices — a sign of the influence of universal reason on man’s sense powers. Averroes, “the other famous Muslim philosopher,” attributes this action to the imaginative in his book on sense and the sensible.
• Conclusion: only four interior powers. He summarizes the two bases: common sense vs. imagination and estimative vs. memory rest on receiving vs. retaining in bodies; common sense vs. estimative rests on whether the object is sensible as such or an intention.

8. Digression: instinct in cats and other animals (“the cat was afraid of that”) #

Point: examples of the estimative power at work, each showing perception of an intention rather than a sense quality.

• Roy Monroe’s kitten played happily with several belts but was suddenly afraid of one with bands on it, struggling when it was pushed toward it: it saw it “as an enemy,” not because its color hurt the eyes; an older cat might not be fooled.
• Moppet (of Tabitha’s litter) was a mother at one year old and, untaught, knew exactly what to do and knew her own.
• Tabitha stood by the one big bowl and did not drink until all seven kittens had left it — “that’s instinct… this estimative power.”
• Student: the joke that there is no drop-in clinic for unwed pregnant animal mothers; they need no one to tell them how to be parents.
• Migrations; fish going upstream to spawn; animals fighting though scratches are not pleasing to the senses; marking territory (Tabitha driving a strange cat from the yard “like a mad woman”); cats watching closely when they know you are observing them; reacting as to an enemy without thinking though they know you feed them.
• Tabitha purring while petted, then turning hostile the moment you started down the basement stairs: she perceives this as against her interest though you are still petting her — nothing is pinching or squeezing her.

9. Reply 1: common as root, not as genus (“kissed by the general”) #

• The interior sense is called common not by predication as a genus but as the common root and source of the exterior senses (the center of the circle again). Dividing “sense” against the five would be like dividing “animal” against dog, cat and horse.
• Aside on the two senses of universal: universale praedicando vs. universale causando — said of all vs. cause of all. Modern philosophers “are always confusing those two.” The grand case: confusing “I am who am” (Christ against the Pharisees in Matthew: you will perish unless you accept that I am; the universal cause of all beings) with “being,” the vaguest notion of our mind said of everything, which “says almost nothing about the thing.” Hegel does this explicitly, identifying the most general notion with the one who said I am who am. Thomas has a little chapter in Summa contra Gentiles I refuting the idea that God is the being said of all things (as mentioned before).
• English “general”: Tommy Franks is the general over there, general as a universal cause commanding the whole operation; “soldier” is general as said of everybody. Shakespeare “is wiser than Hegel” because he puns on the two: when Cressida comes to the Greek camp and Agamemnon kisses her, Ulysses says she has been kissed by the general but not yet kissed in general. MacArthur the general vs. “soldier” general.

10. Reply 2: discerning white from sweet needs a common center (“neither sight nor taste can do that”) #

Argument:

1. The proper sense judges its own sensible, discerning it from others under the same sense: sight white from black or green; taste sweet from bitter and sour.
2. But to discern white from sweet neither sight nor taste can do: sight does not know sweet, taste does not know white; one who discerns two things must know both. If you have tasted only chocolate and I only licorice, neither of us can discriminate them; it must be one person who knows both.
3. So when we distinguish the whiteness of sugar from its sweetness, the immutations of the outward senses must come back to a common center — the common sense (he sometimes says “central sense” to avoid confusion). To it belongs the judgment of discretion, to which all sense apprehensions are referred as to a common term.

• The common sense also perceives the intentions of the senses, as when someone sees that he sees; the proper sense knows only the sensible form by which it is changed, in which change seeing is perfected, and from that change another follows in the common sense that perceives vision. He finds this second point hard to see, and says Aristotle in the De anima leaves it up in the air whether the outward sense knows its own act. What is clear: the outward sense cannot distinguish its object from another sense’s object. Anatomical evidence of the senses converging on the brain would be knowledge by exterior experience; but we also know it by inward experience.

11. Replies 3 and 4: passions of the first sensitive power; what sense cannot perceive (“I have to see you before I can remember you”) #

• Reply 3: as one power arises from the soul by means of another, so the soul is subject to one power by means of another; thus imagination and memory are called passions of the “first sensitive power” — he wonders whether this means the common sense or the outward senses (perhaps both) — because their acts presuppose the acts of those powers. “I have to see you before I can remember you. But I don’t remember you by my eyes.”
• Reply 4: though understanding arises from sense, in the thing sensed it knows many things sense cannot perceive, e.g. the relation of one thing to another, or that you are alive — I cannot sense your life, but seeing you talk, smile and move, reason grasps it. Likewise, in an inferior way, the estimative grasps what the senses as such do not: the eye does not grasp the wolf as enemy, but the instinct does when the shape is seen. Student remark: animals know mother, offspring and owners largely by smell — “probably more so than people realize”; his gloss: it is not the smell that smells an enemy, but something else recognizes an enemy or a friend when it smells it.

12. Replies 5 and 6: elevation by proximity to reason; Augustine’s middle vision (“the same, more perfect than any other animals”) #

• Reply 5: the eminence of the cogitative and memory in man is not through what is proper to the sensing part but through affinity and closeness to universal reason, by a kind of flowing-back or influence; so they are not other powers but the same, more perfect than in other animals.
• He extends this: emotions are common with animals, yet human emotions, by affinity to will and reason, have something animal emotions lack — Mozart represents human emotions very subtly, and no animal has “those same kind of emotions exactly”; as with the fine arts, which involve reason as well as sight, hearing and imagination (there is an order in the music that reason perceives). Pity at someone’s predicament is a kind of sadness; the animal has sadness too, but not that elevated sadness. Likewise he and the cat both eat — not a different power, though he has more interesting food, wine, recipes — the same act elevated by proximity to higher powers; and we dance with legs the animals also have.
• Reply 6: Augustine’s middle, spiritual vision — through likenesses of bodies in the absence of bodies — is used as common to all the interior apprehensions. “That’s the way Thomas solves that. Easy enough.”

His words #

• private sense: his rendering of sensus proprius, alternating with “proper” [ed.: proper sense]
• common by predication vs. common as source/root/terminus (universale praedicando / universale causando)
• central sense: his alternative name for the common sense, “to avoid some confusion in the word”
• phantasticum / phantasia / imaginatio / fancy: taken by Thomas as synonyms, Greek and Latin (Avicenna uses them for two powers)
• intentions: what is perceived as useful, harmful, friendly, enemy, or past — not a sense quality
• estimative power: “something like instinct”
• cogitative / particular reason: the estimative in man, working by collatio, a bringing together; organ in the middle of the head
• vis memorativa: retains intentions; he warns we use “memory” for both imagination and memory in Thomas’s sense
• reminiscence: quasi-syllogistic inquiry into the past
• flowback / influence: his rendering of the influence of universal reason on the sensitive powers [ed.: refluentia]

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, all six replies) Mentioned
• Aristotle, De anima III (Thomas “more complete” than Aristotle on the interior senses; whether outward sense knows its act left open)
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I (one sense lacking, one science lacking)
• Aristotle, On Memory and Reminiscence (the word syllogism)
• Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram XII (three visions)
• Gregory the Great, “anger disturbs the eye of the soul”
• Avicenna, book on the soul (five interior powers)
• Averroes, book on sense and the sensible
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles I, a chapter refuting God as the being said of all
• Matthew (Christ to the Pharisees: “unless you accept that I am”)
• Heraclitus, “the dry soul is wisest and best”
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (“in my mind’s eye”); Troilus and Cressida (inferred title; “kissed by the general… in general”)
• An article in The Thomist on brain regions and the interior senses

His questions #

• Are the sense qualities of its enemy what make the animal aware of it? No — it perceives something beyond the senses, “the instinct,” the estimative power.
• Why would an animal go to an absent place at all? Because it apprehends something absent; motion follows apprehension (Tabitha’s hunting ground, the dish around the corner).
• How many interior senses does Thomas end with? Four: common sense, imagination, estimative, memory.
• What in other animals is the natural estimative is in man called what? The cogitative, or particular reason.
• Can sight or taste discern white from sweet? Neither; one who discerns must know both, so the senses must return to a common center.
• Does “first sensitive power” in reply 3 mean the common sense or the outward senses? Left open (“maybe” the outward senses and the common sense).
• Do we have a different power for eating from the cat? No — the same act, elevated by proximity to reason and will.
• How do animals know their offspring or their owners? By smell, the student says; but something else recognizes friend or enemy in the smell.