De Anima (On the Soul)
30. Custom, Abstraction, and Sensing Our Own Sensing (De Anima III, ch. 2)
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[0:03] Suppose everybody in the world spoke English, everybody, every country, every place. Wouldn't English seem to be the natural way of speaking? You could hardly separate the idea of language from that of what English, right? To speak and speak English would would be the same thing. But when we travel around and have experience of people speaking in French and German and God knows other languages, right, out there, then it becomes what clear, right?

[0:45] The distinction there between language and and English, right? Or between what is natural and to speak English. I always tell the story, you know, when I was in high school, we had a little French class, and one day in class, this kid was having a hard time learning French. So how do the French kids ever learn this? He said. We all broke out loud. And then there was probably some little French kid over there.

[1:20] So how do they ever learn this? I guess it's harder for French to learn English than for English to learn French. They say, but anyway, the point is English, if it's your native language, right? English seems the what natural way of what speaking, right? And French, the other language, seems kind of what artificial, right? And I remember my French teacher there, you know, was talking about this or that French idiom.

[1:55] You know what an idiom is? It's from the Greek word idios, private. A way of speaking that is private to French, and not, you know, the way of speaking in English. He explained the idiom and said, "I said, don't fight it. " He said, "Just accept it. That's the way you say it in French. " And you can see, you know, how

[2:24] it seems, you know, unnatural speaking that that with idiomatic to French, but they would see the same thing in certain ways of speaking in English, huh?

[2:36] Some ways of expressing yourself. We're talking about that those words in Scripture there, you know, where in Greek they say I am, right? And Christ sometimes, Thomas will say, you know, Christ is saying that I am, I am who is. But how would he say in English? How would he say that? There I am. Yeah, it's me. It's me. It's me. You know, so I didn't say I am.

[3:08] I am. I wouldn't say it like alone, you know. Who's there? I am. So Goethe, the German poet, said. You don't really understand your own language until you learn another language, huh? And I suppose part of the meaning of that is you don't realize what's peculiar about your language, what's idiomatic about your language, until you see, right, huh? Somebody else's, huh? And you know how we put the adjective before the noun, and Latin or Greek, they might put the adjective after the noun, huh?

[3:49] And you see, well, it's something kind of arbitrary about where they put the adjective before acting the noun, right? And it might seem natural, right, to put the adjective before the noun, would you say? Huh? Man, white. Some white, huh? I'm a man white. An awkward, unnatural speaking, is it? But it's really time to put arbitrary, huh?

[4:19] Now, the old old phrase custom broadens, huh? And they they pun that nowadays. Some people eat too much in the travels sometimes. They get bigger, but what was the original meaning of custom broadens, huh? I mean, I mean, I don't mean the custom travel broadens. What was the original meaning of that travel broadens? Experience. Yeah. But it because as you travel, you run into different what customs, right?

[4:59] And therefore, you separate what belongs to man as such, right? From what belongs to Englishman or something as such, right? Okay. And if you don't travel, you wouldn't what? You'd have a difficulty separating them, son. Okay. I often take in in class an example there from the the famous Paston letters there, right? And in the 14th century, right? And I've seen you know quotes in the Paston letters, you know, where they they wanted their daughter to marry some old rich money bag, since they decided it was a good arrangement.

[5:43] And she of course didn't want to marry this rich old money bag, but wanted to marry some young, handsome follower of hers. And of course they were beating her every day until she agrees to marry the man. And the historians explain now one should not think that the Pastons were you know cruel or terrible parents, right? Of course, would you do with a daughter who didn't marry the man?

[6:03] you beat her until she agreed? I mean. Well, that's what you do, right? And so things that you know we're kind of surprised sometimes when he does some of these things, these customs over there as far as women and so on are concerned, in the near East, right? But they're equally surprised by our customs, huh? So,

[6:29] so unless you travel, and of course today because of the world has become so united in some ways, I almost have to travel not just in place but travel in time, right? And things are customary in one age, right? Are not customary in another age, and things that are customary in one age are opposed to the customs of another age, right? C. S. Lewis, I think, has some interesting things to say about reading the the ancients, right?

[7:03] And I think he could be stronger, but he's trying to be very convincing and so on. That he's not denying that the ancients made mistakes, right? But the mistakes that they made are not the ones that we made. And vice versa, right? So mistakes that we make and take for granted because of our customs, we're kind of you know caught up when we read the ancients, huh?

[7:29] And don't we have to worry about you know mistakes? You know, they thought the earth was flat, or if they thought that there were you know the moon was was something eternal or something, right? Not to worry about being taken in by those mistakes, right? Because they're contrary to things we customarily heard, right? But if there are mistakes that customary in our age, and of course there are all kinds of them, as long as we live just in our age, we're not going to recognize these things.

[7:59] So, in general, Aristotle is perhaps touching upon in this reason something more general than what he's talking about there, namely the fact that reason has a difficulty in separating things. That are never separated in what your experience, so they never have been in your experience, huh?

[8:34] You know this marvelous play of Shakespeare's there, the Tempest, right? Okay. Well, when Miranda is very young, she and her father are what put on a boat, right? Okay. So her only experience of men is via her father, right? Okay. And then all of a sudden, you know, when the shipwreck takes place and so on, there appears this young man. On the shore, right? Huh? And let's forget the famous words.

[9:09] Oh, Brave New World, right? Huh? Which—that's the name borrowed for this now, right? Okay. I mean, notice, huh? If the only man that this young woman has known is her father, and he's more or less an old man, right? Huh? That's part of understanding what a man is. You see? Doesn't we separate man from old man, right? Huh? Do you see?

[9:42] Just like Adam and Eve before they had children or something, right? You know, a little baby or a little boy or little girl's life, right? Huh? You see, you associate man with, you know, someone in their prime, right? Or a woman in someone in their prime, right? Okay. Do you see that? So she's struck by that. See, this concrete experience. So,

[10:12] this is the more general principle that I think that is emphasized in this particular reason. But our reason would have a hard time separating the common sensibles, right? And defining them, right? Without the private sensibles, huh? If we had only one sense, huh? But the fact that we know

[10:43] shape and surface without color by touch, right? And without hardness by sight, enables us to separate them from both what hardness and what color, right? But if we had only one sense, like the sense of sight, we have a hard time in our thinking separating surface from what color, right? Huh? Making sense to us, huh? What seems to be part of what a surface is is to be colored,

[11:21] to be to have length and width, and to be colored. You don't realize how difficult it is for our mind to separate those, huh?

[11:33] Now, you see that the other kind of abstraction too—that when you separate the universal from the singulars, huh? Or the general from the particular, you have to see in more than one what particular, right? Yeah. Okay.

[11:54] So I mean, if if the only quadrupeds we saw were the dog, we came to what identify quadruped with dog, huh? When you have a dog and a cat and a horse and so on, right? Then you separate, right? Quadruped, huh? Okay. I suppose that the sun seems kind of unique, huh? It's bigger than the stars, apparently, right? Much brighter than the moon and so on, right?

[12:27] The sun seems kind of what? Unique, one of a kind. And so we have to have to separate out maybe what universal or the general from particular there because we experience only one particular, right?

[12:46] You know, if if I was a black man in darkest Africa and at one time to be black would seem to be what? To be part of what it is to be human being, right? My mother came from a small town in Minnesota. There are no blacks in town, right? And she tells a story, you know, of one of the women there going down to the big city with their little boy, you know, up and down the street, and along comes a black boy, and he says, "Go home and wash your face."

[13:19] He didn't see his face. Go home and wash your face. And you hear these stories, you know, people in the old days, you know, getting a black for the first time and putting him in the tub and trying to clean him up, you know, he's so dirty. Poor man! I mean, getting be killed there, being scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. I mean, those are obvious, you know, confusions, but I mean, I mean, they show you how kind of weak our mind is in a sense, huh?

[13:51] You see, can't separate them. We run into what's it? The old story, one eye, two eyes, and three eyes. We run into three-eyed people on some other planet, or one-eyed people. We might, you know, but I don't see any reason to change. Or a three-legged man somewhere, or something I don't know.

[14:23] So, in general, our mind has a difficulty then, right? Separating, right? And when you talk about custom, there, Aristotle says that men like to proceed in the way to which they are accustomed. Point me to wisdom wisdom. We'll see that in the second book of wisdom. And so, men who are accustomed to certain way of thinking, it seems to them the only way of what thinking, huh?

[14:59] And as a college professor, you know, if you get on one of these committees, and there's some question or problem that comes up before the committee, and you've got an economics professor, and a math professor, and a sociology professor, and a philosophy professor, they're going to approach the same, you know, problem in a different way.

[15:19] And you remember one of these committees, you know, and sociologists trying to express it. I says, he says, suppose you're doing like a word count of Thomas or something, you know. My my editor's, what the hell are you doing a word count in Thomas? Or maybe something the sociologist does some kind of a thing, you know.

[15:41] But you know, you talk to experimental scientists, you know, and they're looking for some kind of experimental proof or something, you know. That's not going to be known in that way.

[15:53] I like to think of my my favorite whipping boys, you know, they're very eminent scientists. In fact, I used to book sometimes, and I talk philosophy of science. I mentioned this book before. Claude Bernard, you know him. Sort of famous physiologist of the 19th century there in France, and made many important discoveries and so on. And he wrote a book among other books called "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine."

[16:31] Right. It's a famous book. It was written around the 1860s, I think, and it's still reprinted. The edition I had came from Harvard. You know, translated English, of course, and everything. So it's still being reprinted. It still is a classic. And Bernard didn't think that biology was sufficiently what scientific in the middle of the 19th century, and so he wrote this book, "Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine.

[17:03] " And the book has three parts. And the first part is a general description of the experimental method. The second part is talking about the experimental method in biology, in particular. And the third part is examples from his own research as a physiologist, exemplifying the experimental method in biology. Now, if you go back to that first part, there, he has a very good understanding in many ways of the experimental method and so on.

[17:35] But when he compares experimental science with philosophy and theology, right, it's almost laughable the the distinction, right? He says he sees them as having something of the experimental methods, but in diminution of the whole method. So what the experimental scientist does, he's got an idea, which we call an hypothesis, right? That's first thing he has. Second thing is deduction, right? He deduces the consequences of the idea.

[18:11] He makes predictions on the basis of the idea, right? And third, he goes out to see if those predictions, in fact, take place or not, right? Either confirming his idea or ridiculous, right? that's three components of his idea, right? Now the philosopher has just two of those. He has an idea, and he reasons, right? But then never goes out and checks

[18:37] it. And then the theologian just has ideas, doesn't even think, doesn't reason. So I mean, I mean, he's a man who's so immersed in this kind of thinking, right, that's the only way of completely thinking about anything, right? I see. You know, you compare it to Heisenberg. Heisenberg, of course, is working in physical sciences, right? Which is where one had first got going, and so on.

[19:17] And Heisenberg said, when we move into new area of the physical sciences, we don't have to give up. He says the attempt to understand, but we may have to learn a new meaning. He says of the word understanding. Interesting way of putting it. He realizes that even within the physical sciences, the way of understanding is not going to be the same in different parts. And the way of understanding in mechanics is not the same as we have understanding in quantum theory or in relativity theory.

[19:53] But if you are accustomed to just one method, one way of proceeding, that seems to be the only way of proceeding. And the other way of proceeding is either, you know, wrong or, you know, defective, incomplete.

[20:16] Sometimes I defend, you know, liberal education and this kind of loose notion people have nowadays of what it is. But liberal education is opposed to a very highly specialized education, right? That in liberal education you are introduced to many different kinds of what knowledge, right? And many different ways of thinking, right? And therefore you are not enslaved to one method alone, and therefore you have a certain freedom there, right?

[20:50] But no, if you don't have that experience, then you'd be like Descartes everywhere seeking a what kind of mathematical way of proceeding, huh Or like Bernard everywhere seeking this experimental method.

[21:09] That's part of, you know, the way you have corruption say, even in theology, you know, that theology tried to, in the 20th century and even before, they tried to imitate the experimental method. If you read the Enlightenment there, the philosophy of the Enlightenment there by Ernst Cassirer, the whole Enlightenment tried to take the method of Newton and make it the method of every science, of all human knowledge,

[21:40] and. But there you see that that general thing I was talking about, right? If you haven't seen, you know, a reasonable way of proceeding, right, in more than just one particular part of human knowledge, that seems to be the only reasonable way of proceeding. And if you have to proceed that way everywhere, or not?

[22:08] In our brother Richard's high school physics book, down they had a quote there from Lord Kelvin, you know, the famous British physicist. He says, "I don't care what the matter is; if it's not measurable, it's not scientific." You know, everything has to be measured, right?

[22:30] So this seems to be the only way. Like Saint Thomas even says, with Catholic faith, some people are brought up in the Catholic faith. Maybe everyone around them is. They almost think the Catholic faith is like something known by natural understanding. Yeah.

[23:18] So no, it just exemplifies something even more universal than what he's talking about here. But it's the first example, you might say, right? Both of our knowing the same thing in different ways, or by different kinds of knowledge, knowing the same thing, right? But also, it's exemplifying this difficulty our mind would have, right? Of separating things that never separated in our experience.

[24:00] Brother Richard, I remember talking about marriage a bit there. When you marry somebody, you realize that in different households and different families, things are done differently. And

[24:19] so the way things are done in your family, you grew up seems like the only way of doing these things, right? And maybe some things were done better in your family than your spouse's family, but vice versa, there might be some things they did that were better, right? But then you can compare these things.

[24:41] But if you just had intermarriage, you know, brother friend, sister and so on, among other problems, you'd always be doing things the same way, right? And you'd never, you know, maybe prove right.

[25:07] Ways of cooking things. So let's turn now to chapter two. Now, in chapter two, Aristotle is going to begin to examine some acts, some kinds of sensing they seem that we experience, but don't seem to maybe pertain to the what five outward senses, huh? He's going to investigate two things, huh? And from the first, he's going to be more hesitant to reason from it to an inward sense, but from the second, he will very definitely reason to it, huh?

[26:06] Okay. Now, what are these two that he's going to be talking about, huh? Well, the first of them is mentioned there in 274 Since, however, we sense that we see and hear, it is necessary to sense that one sees either by sight or by a different sense. He's going to investigate whether it's by the same one. In other words, do I sense not only color, but to also sense that I see color?

[26:45] Do I have within me not only experience of of color, but also an experience of what? Of seeing. And likewise, huh? Do I sense not only sound when I hear the sound, right? But to also sense my hearing.

[27:17] I'm not talking about seeing and hearing now, as reason talks about them universally, but this seeing, right, huh? My seeing this this painting or something, right? Or my hearing the music of Mozart, right? Do I sense, in other words, not only the music of Mozart or sense the painting, but I also sense my what? Seeing paintings, my hearing music, right? My tasting food and so on, right?

[27:52] Okay. So he's going to be investigating that, right? Is it by my eye that I know not only color but the seeing of color? Is it by my ear that I know only sound? I also know about my ear, what it is, what it is. But do I sense my hearing of sound?

[28:19] Or is it requires something within, right? Okay. Thomas is fairly definite that it does. Aristotle is not so definite here, right? Okay. He's going to investigate that first.

[28:46] Now, on the bottom of twenty-nine there, in two eighty-five, and especially two eighty-six there, I'm going to talk about the another thing that we experience, and that is that we discriminate. in a sense-like way, not only between, let's say, sweet and bitter, which you do by the sense of taste, and green and red, as you do by the eye, right? But we also distinguish between red and sweet, or white and sweet, huh?

[29:24] We distinguish between? them? And there is going to be a problem about saying that one of the exterior senses does this, huh? Does the sight know the difference between white and sweet?

[29:42] And I talk about sugar, and I talk about white and sweet, and so on. I distinguished between the whiteness of sugar and the sweetness of sugar. But does my sight, my eye, know that difference? My doesn't know as such sweetness at all, right? But it does know white. Does my sense of taste taste the difference between white and sweet? They can't taste white at all, right?

[30:13] Well, then the question will arise, Well, can the two of them together see the difference? If I've heard Mozart and you've heard rock and roll, but I haven't heard rock and roll and you haven't heard Mozart, can we know together the difference between the two? Or does one and the same man have to listen to both and say, "Hey, I can see a difference, " right?

[30:54] So, if one sense knows white, the other sense knows sweet, but no sense knows both. What do we know the difference between the two?

[31:08] Okay. So Aristotle is asking now: Is there some more inward sense, huh? Whereby we know the difference between white and sweet. We know the difference between color and sound, right?

[31:31] But that's the second one is going to investigate, and that'll be the second half. And there he's going to be more definite about it, requiring an inward sense that they have to come back in a way, right? To a common center, which you'll call the common sense, but I sometimes call it the central sense because when you say common sense, you might think you mean what those are common sensibles, or are the meanings of common sense right?

[31:57] But call the central sense right. Okay, so he's going to be arguing that. We sense the difference between white and sweet, but we don't do it by any of the outward senses, even by two of the outward senses together.

[32:13] But before he investigates that, which is one of the reasons more definite, as an interior sense, He examines this other thing that we seem to sense, not only color, but we seem to sense our seeing of color. In the concrete, there.

[32:33] I was sitting in the museum there, and I've been looking at that painting there, right? In a sense way, I'm not only aware of the painting, but I'm also aware of my what? Seeing of the painting, right?

[32:48] But is that by the eye that I know that? So he's going to investigate that first. But after he arrives at at the central sense, then he's going to eventually ask, "Now is that reason, or is reason something different? " And reason is something different from this central sense, huh? Okay. So he's going gradually from the outward, inward, you might say, huh?

[33:20] And he's going to talk about emotion and about will after he talks about sense and reason, huh? In a sense, they're even more inward, right? Okay.

[33:37] It's kind of interesting the the word heart, the way we use the word heart. I see in scripture too sometimes. Heart is sometimes used for what?

[33:52] The will. Yeah, yeah. Say the the desiring power, right? Okay. But sometimes it's used the knowing powers too. So the heart is something within, right? When we say, you know, I want you to learn that by heart. That that's memory, right? The internal senses, huh? Okay. When I say my heart's not in it, I'm using heart there in the sense of my what? Will, yeah.

[34:22] But I just refer to it as heart because it seems to indicate something in the interior within. But but the heart in the sense of the hardly matter the heart in the sense of the will is even more within. Than than than the reason. The reason is closer to the senses.

[34:47] And you know, you see that you know, reflected later on when you say, the Trinity, because God the Son proceeds by way of God understanding Himself. And the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of God loving Himself, but the Holy Spirit, even the way He's named, seems to have less of a name, right, than the Son or the Word, because Spirit is a name in a way common to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and Holy is common, you know, holy, holy, holy, right?

[35:27] But it's a little harder to understand, in a sense, the Holy Spirit than to understand the the Word, if I can. Both very difficult, more obscure, you know.

[35:45] But what about like human beings? You know, is it easier to know somebody's mind or his heart? His mind or his will, which is more hidden from you, my mind or my will? What?

[36:07] Well, on one hand, you're communicating what's in your mind, but you're willing also to communicate that which is in your heart. So it seems you can't express both. Yeah. Yeah. But do we know more that we have faith? Let's say, take the logical virtue, or that we have charity. See, you know, Scripture says, you know, man knows not whether to be worthy of love or hate, right?

[36:35] Okay, and it's stated that we're not, we can't be sure about having charity in the way we can be sure about having the faith, huh? As if the mind, you know, in some way and its condition is more known to us huh? Than the heart, huh?

[37:02] And and which is more known to me? What I think, or what my intentions really are, and what I do. huh? Am I teaching people out of, you know, love of truth as a common good? Are the good of the minds I'm instructing? Am I doing it out of vanity? You know, you know, I've been admired. Huh? Even intentions.

[37:41] what do the saints speak of? You know, purity. You're talking about purity of intention, right? You know, it's a very hard thing to know whether you have that purity of intention, right? Why are you doing these things? Huh? Do we think to the honor and glory of God? You know, that's not as clear, right? It's more clear to me what I think than what my intentions are and what I do.

[38:26] Okay, so we're kind of going from the outward inward. That's interesting. And even going from the the plant powers, right? They are more outward in a sense than the sense powers. huh? And the sense powers, huh? And the sense powers are more outward, especially the outward senses as we call them, than the what? Than the reason, right? But the knowing powers are not as outward in a sense as the are more outward than than the desiring powers.

[38:59] So the aspect of going from The more known to what is less known, right? So he's starting to raise the possibilities here now, going back to two seventy four here at the beginning of chapter two. Since however, we sense that we see in here. you know, it's the sensing that we see and hear is not the same thing as understanding what seeing is, right? Understanding what hearing is, right?

[39:32] It's it's in the particular, right? Okay. So when I hear the music of Mozart, you know, and and I have delight or pleasure in hearing the music of Mozart, and so I'm inclined to go back and hear more of the music of Mozart, right? Huh? I'm very much aware of of the pleasurable sensation that I have, right? Of the music of Mozart, right? So I'm kind of sensing in the concrete there, you might say, right?

[40:07] My own hearing, huh? And the the wine, connoisseur when he's tasting the wine, you know, it's getting to know the taste of the wine, you know, but he's enjoying the sensation of the wine, huh? Right?

[40:24] So he's talking about that concrete individual sensation of the wine, huh? See, he's sensing that in a way, right? The pleasure that's in that, huh?

[40:43] I look at the you see these paintings are the Hudson School, you know, Hudson School painting there, landscape painting. They're very restful, you know, very very nicely done. So I'm kind of sensing my my seeing of those paintings, huh?

[41:06] Is it by my eye that I sense my seeing, or by my ear that I hear my hearing? Do I sense my hearing, or is it by something more within, right? That's knowing them, huh?

[41:25] And I raised a question, there but the same sense will be of sight and of the underlying color, but the same sense will be of sight and of the underlying color. Now sight there means the act of sight, huh? Whence either two will be of the same or the same of itself. Now what's the problem he's raising there, right? See, can I really sense my seeing the painting without in some way sensing the painting?

[41:53] Because seeing is not really knowable without something seen, right? So I couldn't really know my seeing without in some way knowing what I'm seeing. So it seems that what sees color,

[42:09] what sees the seeing, must also see the color, right? Well, then do you have another power in us that knows the seeing, and the eye doesn't know the seeing, but only color? But that inward power would have to know color too, right?

[42:30] See the problem? Okay. Once either two will be of the same, there will be two things knowing color: the eye knowing only color, and this inward knowing the seeing of the eye at the same time the color known by the eye. So you have two things knowing color, or else you have the original one knowing both color and its sensing of the color, right?

[43:04] There's a certain problem there in saying that you have another sense that knows the seeing of the eye, and the eye doesn't know its own seeing, because the other sense would have to know color, and then you get redundancy: two powers knowing. More says in 276, if a different sense would be the sense of the seeing, if no power knows its own what act, right? But some other power knows it.

[43:33] Well, then you have to have another power to know that act. Well, you have to end up with infinity of powers, right? Well, if you're going to avoid that fin, you have to have the same thing, but knowing itself. Whence one ought to do this, in the sense in the first what case, right?

[43:58] Yet there's a difficulty in saying this, he says in 277. For sensing by sight to seeing, while color or what has color is seen, if something will see the seeing, the first seeing thing will also have what color, right?

[44:21] If the object, the private object of the object that defines sight is color, right? How could it see its own seeing if that's something other than color, right? It's not common senseable either. Then you have to either say what? I'm going to suggest two things. He says either going to have to say that there's two kinds of seeing, one of which is sensing color, and the other is sensing what seeing.

[45:03] Or you're going to have to say that seeing. Sensing, seeing, in a way, is sensing color. And this goes back to what he said before. You know, the senses are acted upon by their objects, right? And so, in a way, the senses are their objects, right? So, in a way, the eye is colored, although not originally.

[45:37] Now, he argues on the one hand in one and two seventy-eight that there is more than one kind of sensing. Is apparent, therefore, that sensing by sight is not one. For even when we do not see, we discern by sight both darkness and light, but not in the same way.

[45:58] I think he's referring to the fact, you know, when you wake up in the middle of the night or something, and you see something, no, no, right? So you're not sensing any seeing, right? You're not sensing any color, right? You kind of know it, right? Your lack of seeing at that point, but other times you're aware of seeing, right? All right, people, you know, wake up in the middle of the night.

[46:29] Did you hear something? No, I didn't hear anything. I heard something. You know, like somebody's broken into the house and stuff like that. You know, kind of strange when you when we first moved to our house, you know, from the apartment. I think I was there before my wife was there, and you guys here spend the night there, you know, in the strange house, and you hear these sounds often that you know you wouldn't notice at all now, you know,

[46:53] But every house has some kind of sound to it. I don't know what causes the sound, you know, but whether it's wind breaking or the settling of the house and all these things, you know, and it's amazing, you know, how you hear these things at first night, cover yourself, hearing things, huh? Okay.

[47:15] But no, but when somebody asks you, did you hear? Did you hear that? I said, just sometimes you what are aware of your hearing, right? Sometimes you're not, huh?

[47:29] Now, the other way of looking at it is in two seventy-nine, is to say, well, maybe seeing is not altogether outside of that object of sight, which is color, right? Because seeing is what receiving color, right? And therefore, seeing in a way is being colored, although not in the way the exterior object is colored, right? But in a kind of immaterial or spiritual way, as we say.

[48:01] Moreover, even the thing seeing is as if colored, right? For as we pointed out earlier, especially at the end of the last book, for each sense organ is receptive of the sensible without the matter. Right. Whence, even in the absence of the sensibles, the sensations and imaginings are in the sense organ.

[48:27] So you know, you look at something for a while. You know, I close this, and I still kind of see the black, right? I still the black kind of inside me, right? I close my eyes now, right? Not really seeing you outside of me, but that black kind of remains, right?

[48:46] Not getting into these obscure questions about, you know, we speak of the aftertaste of a wine, whatever that means. The act of the sensible and of the sense are the same in one, but being is not. the Same for them. Being means what? Not the same. There, in what definition, right? Okay.

[49:15] Now, this goes back to what we saw even in natural philosophy, in acting upon, undergoing, right? Are they really two different realities? Is my kicking you, for example, and your being kicked, are they really something different?

[49:41] Or my pressing down upon the pillow, right? I put my head down the pillow at night. My head presses down the pillow, right? Or depresses, you might say, the pillow, right? Huh? Is my depressing the pillow and the pillow being depressed? Are these two different realities?

[50:07] No, but you might define them a little bit differently, right? Huh? Okay. Because one would be called acting upon, the other would be called what? Undergoing, right? Okay.

[50:22] Is my pushing the glass and it's being pushed two different realities? See, sometimes why I speak as if, you know, my pushing was the cause of its being pushed, right? As if they were two different things—one the cause, one the effect.

[50:51] Can you separate me the pushing of the glass and it's being pushed in that way? No, unless you think just the movement of your arm, right? Yeah. If you look at the movement of the glass as being in the glass from me, then it's being pushed, right? You look at the movement of the glass as from me into the glass, right? Then it's pushing. Is my

[51:24] lifting the book? It's being lifted. Same. The same thing, huh? Well, since sensing is a being acted upon, right? Undergoing, right? Acting upon and undergoing here are the same, but they differ in what definition, huh? Okay.

[51:55] So the the expression the sensible in act. Yeah, in the sense and the sense and act are the same, yeah. The sensible act, but they differ definition, yeah. You don't mean like actual color, but you mean actually causing sensation, right? Yeah, I can say the color acting upon my eye, and it's being seen by my eye, the same. Well, obviously, the different definition, right? In the same way that acting upon undergoing, do I?

[52:30] So he says the act of the sensible and of the sense are the same and one, but being is not the same for them. That's kind of confusing the way Aristotle used the word being there, but I think it's kind of become a contraction for him, you know. Usually says that what was to be, you know, and so. Okay.

[52:59] I mean, sound according to act and hearing according to act. For what has hearing may not be hearing, and what has sound does not always sound. Yet, whenever what is able to hear is at work and what is able to sound sounds, then the hearing, according to act, and the sound according to act come together. Which things one would call the one hearing, the other what sounding, right?

[53:24] The one is an acting upon, and the other is a what being acted upon, huh? So that it says sounding. Maybe a problem with naming these things, and he himself says that the Greek can always name both, huh? The act of the what sensible, right, acting upon us, and the reverse, right? But in this case, they they seem to be a different name, right?

[54:04] By sounding in act, like the the radio is on or it's off. Yeah, but it's got to be acting. It's acting upon my ear, right? The sound.

[54:23] Yeah, so you would say that the the radio is sounding when it's on, even though the sounds are gone, nobody's hearing it. I think he's thinking of the sounding as something that is actually acting upon the ear, yeah. It's

[54:45] stimulating, might say, you know, in English, stimulating my sense organ, right? Now that stimulating of my sense organ is the same thing as my sensing, huh?

[55:07] Maybe you would say audible or something. Well, that might name it too much in potency, right? Audible means what, the hearable, what's able to be heard, right? Okay. But he's taking now an act.

[55:27] So he's going back in 280, he says, "you know, to what we've learned about motion, and again, I would translate these in English as not activity and passion, but acting upon and what undergoing, right? Okay, or acting upon and being acted upon, right?

[55:48] These are the same thing as motion. That's the reason why Thomas you know raised that question there when he talks about the categories, right? If motion, activity, and passion are all the same thing, why are acting upon undergoing two different categories, right? And well,

[56:09] activity, acting upon, undergoing are naming the thing with reference to what something outside of you, right? Yeah. And so, in acting upon, you are being named in a way from the thing you are acting upon, and in undergoing, you are being named in a way from the one who's acting upon you. So there is some extrinsic denomination that's that you have in the last six categories. But the motion, as such, we put in whatever the motion is in, like locomotion and where and

[56:48] becoming hot and quality and so on. Because there you're considering just what's intrinsic, right? If then the motion and acting upon undergoing are in the one being acted upon, it is necessary also that the sound according to act and the hearing according to act are in what is according to potency. This is like a particular kind of acting upon undergoing, right, or another kind maybe of acting upon undergoing.

[57:34] For the act of the active and the motive comes to be in the suffering, undergoing, and he makes a kind of corollary there. Whence it is not necessary for the mover to be what moved, right?

[57:50] Because motion and even the acting upon is in the thing being moved. Therefore, the act of what can sound is the sound or sounding; that of what can hear, the hearing or the hearkening. For hearing is twofold and sound is twofold, and the same account is found in the other senses sensibles, in potency and in act, right, in potency and in in act. For just as the activity and the passivity are in what suffers, but on what acts, thus also the act is sensible and that of the sensitive are in the sensitive.

[58:32] But in some cases they are named, he says, sounding and hearing; in some, one of the two is unnamed. For the act of sight is called vision, but the act of color is what unnamed, right?

[58:48] And the act of what can taste is tasting, but the act of flavor is what unnamed. Since however. The act of the sensible and the sensitive are one, while their being or definition is different, is necessary for what are in this way called hearing and sounding, to be destroyed and conserved together. And flavor then and tasting it is similarly, but this is not necessary in the case of things set according to potency.

[59:29] So you could have the sense right, without the what is able to sound right, and vice versa. But the previous students of nature did not say this well, opining that the white and the black are nothing without sight, nor flavor without taste. Of course, that comes back in the moderns. They're always talking about you know people, you know is there sound in the forest right? And there's no ears there right?

[59:58] Aristotle says you're not seeing distinction here between sound in ability and sound in what act right? And because there's no sounding in act without hearing at the same time, they say in no way is there sound in the forest right, without an ear to hear it right?

[1:00:23] Aristotle says yes there is, but in another sense there is no sounding right, without hearing. In this they spoke rightly and in this not rightly, for a sense and sensible being said in two ways, in some cases according to potency or ability, in other cases according to act. In the latter cases, what is said occurs, but in the others it does not occur. But those speakers spoke simply about what is spoken of, not simply right.

[1:00:58] So, but It's a little bit like what we said later on about earlier about food, you know, is it like or unlike the fed right? And there you had a disagreement of opinion among the predecessors right? But in the beginning it's unlike the fed, in the end it's like the fed. It's not exactly the same distinction, but there's something like this right? He's saying that in a way, in one way there is sound without the air, right?

[1:01:28] another way there is no sound without the air. There's sound in ability or potency, but not in act. But this ability or potency is not nothing right?

[1:01:50] So does your food have flavor before you eat it? Before you taste it? Of course it's flavorful only when you're enjoying its flavor? Aristotle says they seem to deny that it has any flavor, right? Was not being tasted, right?

[1:02:26] That's true in one way, but another way, it's not true. Does yeah? There's something able to be tasted there, right? But not actually tasted until you're tasting it. So if by flavor you mean what is tasted, right? What's tasted only when it's tasted, right? But there's something tasteable there before it's tasted.

[1:03:39] Otherwise, it would make any difference what you eat, really, as far as taste is concerned, right? Make any difference which disc I put on.

[1:03:59] The sound was not there, at least in the ability, in some way, right? I'll put this disc on if I want my hearing to be pleasant, right? I don't want to suffer. In the original sense, I'd put on some other tips. It was a saint who used to mix their food with ashes, you know, so they wouldn't give any sense pleasure, you know, to distract them with higher things.

[1:04:46] It seems there's this kind of confusion for the word to name the things. So if you say, "Is the color there? " Inability. When I'm not seeing it, but in act. when I'm seeing it, you wouldn't say that.

[1:05:21] Like the fire, you wouldn't say the fire's hot in ability, when I'm not. feeling it, but it's hot in act when I'm feeling it because the. You would say it's it's heating inability if there's nothing around it. Trying to bring the things down. Might be a difference between the sense of touch too and the other senses. The way you spoke of the sense of touch before, right?

[1:05:51] You know, when when you spoke of it being as the properties of the body as such, right? Remember that back in the chapter there.

[1:06:01] The tangibles, therefore, are the differences of body as body. So you might you might see those as being, even more in the in the body, right? Before they're felt, right? And the sound, right?

[1:06:33] But I don't think you know when he talks about the sound inability there, he's thinking about the fact that I can clink this glass, you know. I don't think he's going back that far, is he?

[1:06:48] No, I don't think so. But that's kind of what we would think about sound inability. Yeah. Yeah. Seems like sound too. We don't really have a name. It's.

[1:07:10] As I think of sound, I'm like for the flavor. Yeah. We don't have. Well, we'll put this way here: is sound what is heard, or is sound what is able to be heard? Would I put it that way? Would you answer that question? I would say what is able to be heard. You wouldn't distinguish, I hear Aristotle. I'm not with the word sound there.

[1:07:53] I think Aristotle is doing it in a sense is distinguishing there between. What is able to be heard and what is actually heard. And and what is able to be heard, is sensible and ability, right? What is actually heard is sensible and act, huh?

[1:08:13] Yeah. Except the sensible is, and but the sensible act. You know, the sensible is the objective sense, and the objective sense acts upon its object, right? Yeah. So the sensible act means the acting upon of the sensible upon sense, right? Yeah. And that's the undergoing of the senses and the sensing of the senses. Then. I think Aristotle is coming to that now because he's not. He's already in a sense taught that before in the second book, right?

[1:08:52] But he's coming back to it here because he's trying to point out that, in a way, sensing. Is being sensible, that that. Seeing is being colored, right? And hearing is is being sound, right? Because sound is acting upon the ear, right? And that acting upon the ear by sound is the ear is hearing, right?

[1:09:25] And therefore, it's not so altogether clear that the ear cannot hear its own hearing, right? Because what it hears is sound, right? In a way, hearing is sound, right? Or it's having sound, huh? Okay, So

[1:09:53] Aristotle's thinking very subtly about this, and he doesn't seem to force the issue here so much from this act, right, to necessity of an inward sense. I think

[1:10:07] Thomas and other texts when he talks about this seems to see that even that act requires an inward sense. But it's more clear or stronger that Aristotle is going to argue from the the other fact that we know the difference between the proper sensibles, the private sensibles, of different senses. We sense the difference between white and sweet, for example. Okay.