Abstract
Sense perceptions can serve as materials for further mental operations. The imagination can use past and present ones by abstracting and combining them in new ways. In this way there arises awareness of individual movements and substances. Experience comes about when the animal has an image generalized from these individuals, so as to have a proto-universal with many accidental features and without a theoretical account. The intellect in turn can operate on these materials so as to abstract universal concepts, separate out their accidental features, and arrive at their definitions. The intellect can then operate recursively on those concepts so as to produce even more general concepts. Thinking and perceiving have the same structure but operate on different materials, produce different content, and differ in their dependence on the organism having those abilities.
The intellect is the ability of making the jump from the individual to the universal. It is infallible at what it does: apprehending universal concepts by direct intuition, but it can err in its judgements about those concepts. The universals exist in re, in the individual substances , but are there indistinctly and not separately.
A science like physics works by synthesis , adding motion to perceptible substance. A science like mathematics works by abstraction, eliminating the substance and keeping only accidents like shapes, now treated as subjects in their own right. Aristotle calls these mathematical objects the ultimate abstractions. As they have a relational structure, they cannot exist in their own right.
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Notes
- 1.
As Wedin notes, Aristotle does use
in accordance with Plato
’s usage at Mem. 450b20–451a2. For Plato the things in this world are homonyms
and mere appearances of the Forms, while not necessarily preserving their structures (
). [Prm. 133d2; Resp. X; Tim. 37d; Crat.431d–433c]. - 2.
Hamlyn (1968: 153) says that Aristotle here is asserting that all animals have imagination but sometimes “only in an indeterminate form.”
- 3.
For Plato if not for Aristotle plants seem to have consciousness. [Tim. 77a–c]
- 4.
Block (1961: 50, 75–7) argues that De Anima comes before the others, the parva naturalia and the biological works. However, as Aristotle does not announce that he is making a fresh start, I shall pursue a unitarian interpretation.
- 5.
Also see above on Everson and Schofield .
- 6.
Today we would qualify that: amoebae, bacteria et al. apparently start eating whatever they come in contact with.
- 7.
- 8.
She admits that Aristotle provides little explicit text. Cf. Schofield 1992: 250.
- 9.
I shall offer a reconstruction from the point of view of the content of perceptions and imaginations in the next chapter. See too Schofield 1978: 123–6.
- 10.
Given Aristotle’s dislike of infinite regresses, it is likely that he would assume an end to the sequences. Given his theory in the Posterior Analytics and in Metaphysics XII of putting all predications and all causes into a single series, it is likely that he would want there to be a single series of mental operations leading to and stopping at the ultimate abstractions. Yet, as Pellegrin , M. Frede et al. have emphasized, Aristotle in practice is much more flexible in his classifications and goes where the data lead him.
- 11.
Cf. Ackrill 1981: 67. M. Frede 1996a: 380: “Pour avoir des pensées, il ne suffit pas d’ avoir la seule capacité passive de penser, il faut également un analogue de l’art du constructeur qui explique que la réalisation de cette capacité passive de penser prend la forme d’une pensée. C’est donc dans ce sens que le penser, vu comme passion ou mouvement, presuppose non seulement une capacité de penser, mais aussi un agent qui produit les pensées.”
- 12.
Accordingly I do not want to go all the way with Modrak ’s claim that sense perception is veridical while imagination is not (Modrak 1986, 1987: 82). Still, she does say that, despite the connotations of ‘phantasia ’ as giving mere appearances and not realities, some phantasmata, such as those of memory “…must provide reasonably reliable information. Memory is also a crucial link in the cognitive chain leading from perception to knowledge. Here again it must be trustworthy…” at least in certain conditions (Modrak 1987: 82).
- 13.
Cf. (ps,) Simplicius , in De An. 166.5; 166, 17, on sunesis. [Eth. Nic. VI.10]
- 14.
Things hadn’t improved much later on. Cf. D. Frede 2001: 173: “The phantasiai of the primary senses provide insight into the essences of simple things, while those of the common sense and the accidentals are the material for more complex assessments with propositional content. Unfortunately Aquinas does not work out the details of this theory…”
- 15.
Alexander (in Metaph. 4, 15–22) claims that Aristotle denies that animals have experience. However I agree with Gregorić and Grgić (2006: 12, n. 28) who note that Aristotle assumes that many animals have experience (Hist An. 612a16–7; 614b21; 629b24; Eth. Nic 1118a20–1).
- 16.
Gregorić and Grgić (2006: 11) also note the connection of experience to per accidens perception .
- 17.
Cf. Sorabji 1993b.
- 18.
Alexander (in De An. 68, 10–3) says that perceptions leave types or models in the imagination —or perhaps for the imagination to use; cf. 70, 3–7; 72, 5–10: types are the impressions left as with a signet ring —so the metaphor suggests a quasi-universal. He also observes, 71, 22–3, that practical activity follows imagination in animals as well as in men.
- 19.
As perceptions are typically of singulars, it is understandable that Engberg -Pedersen (1979: 316) says that experience contains no universal element (other than the one that does with perception), but is closely connected with memory . “It is a state of mind that at one moment connects the memory of a number of individual cases.”
- 20.
Sorabji (2005: 174) likewise takes 100a6, “experience or universal”, as two options—a rudimentary universal like ox or a grasping of the essence.
- 21.
So too Everson (1997: 224) admits that “to acquire an experience is to acquire a concept.” He says that there is “no ability to think of properties independently of how they perceptually appear.” He appeals to “demonstrative concepts of properties” (Everson 1997: n. 78), but this interpretation of Aristotle might be too involved. Cf. Everson 1997: 227, n. 84. He also notes that the color of the rash of the present patient may be not quite the same as the color of the past ones, but still that the experienced doctor “will be able to recognize the rash” (Everson 1997: 226). The question is: how? Indeed, “re-cognize” is suggestive…
Gadamer (2004: 350) says that Aristotle agrees that “experience is valid so long as it is not contradicted by new experience.”
- 22.
Cf. Themistius , in An. Po., 63, 25–6. Cf. An. 427b6–11; 429a10–1 where again the practical and theoretical knowledge are set together; also Eth. Nic. 1139b14–1141b8 on the difference between productive art and contemplative science.
- 23.
Charles (2000: 111–2, 132–5, 142–3, esp. n. 3) agrees and notes as the main difference that thought deals with abstract objects that do not exist independently of the thinking process. So too Wedin 1993: 130, 134–5. We could also add the difference of the non-physical character of active noûs . Cf. Sorabji 1992: 213.
- 24.
Simplicius (in de An. 200, 200, 14–5) on 427a9–16, claims that perceptive judgement or discrimination (
) is active and impassive like noûs
. However, although we can distinguish the faculty of judgement from the perceptive capacity, it is not clear that Aristotle would say that the former exists when the animal dies—except insofar as it is a function of noûs
? - 25.
Thus the Greek commentators, perhaps also following theories other than Aristotle’s, from Alexander onwards distinguish many types of noûs (Alexander , in De An. 89, 19–30; 107, 28ff., esp. 113, 6–9; Mantissa 108, 29 et passim).
- 26.
Robinson (1989: 75, n. 12) says “…perception and thinking…are alike in that they both are assertoric. They are entirely unalike, however, in that thinking can have totally “abstract” objects for its content.” I think he makes two mistakes here: first, ‘assertoric’ cannot be applied in the same sense to perceptions and thoughts; second, for Aristotle, an object can be totally abstract and still have perceptual content.
- 27.
Alexander , in De An. 83, 12: noûs deals with synthesis .
- 28.
The latter example seems to belong, strictly, to a later stage of the abstract objects discussed at 429b18ff.
- 29.
- 30.
Aristotle is rather silent on how this is possible and happens, but not so later Aristotelians like Avicenna . See Bäck 2009b.
- 31.
Aristotle seems to allow for stages of abstraction within mathematics itself, say, instances of circles to circle in general or from triangles with particular angles to triangle in general. Cf. Metaphysics 1035b1–3; 1036b32–5. If so, Themistius (in De An., 96, 5–8) is wrong when he says that a statue and being a statue are different, but not point and being a point, for the substance is the same as its form in the case of immaterial substances. For the abstraction seems to require intelligible matter for its base.
- 32.
- 33.
Rorty 1979: 45: “The substantial forms of frogness and starness get right into the Aristotelian intellect, and are there in just the same way they are in the frogs and stars…”
- 34.
Some modern interpreters have the same view. Ross (1956: 47), for example, suggests that productive mind “divines the existence of abstractions that are never presented in experience”; Caston 1993: 111, 125; Gerson 2005: 140–52. Wedin at times seems to favor this view (Wedin 1988: 111). However he seems to end up with a view of strong supervenience, where for Aristotle the mental properties necessarily arise from the physical states and are reducible to them.
- 35.
(Ps.) Simplicius (in de An. 290, 6–8; 187, 8) holds that perceiving that we perceive holds only for rational animals.
- 36.
Themistius (in An. Po., 64, 7–8) interprets Posterior Analytics II.19 thus.
- 37.
- 38.
So too Modrak (2001: 107) speaks of individual mistakes and the pragmatic grounds to accept the consensus of experts.
- 39.
Cf. Charles 2000: 138: “…one need not know, in thinking, that the thoughts one has are caused in an appropriate way by an appropriate object.”
- 40.
This conception of per accidens thinking gives an explanation to his query why Aristotle throws in “except accidentally” at 1051b26 in talking about our knowledge of incomposites.
- 41.
A rival, Neo-Platonic interpretation has noûs being infallible because either it apprehends the essence or it fails to do so even though there is the belief that it has succeeded. The latter allows for mistakes in thinking, but the mistake does not lie in the operation of noûs but in how “we” interpret it. But who is this “we”? Cf. Berti 1996: 402. Wedin (1988: 171) defends the infallibility of noûs by restricting it to my awareness that I am thinking, along with lines of Nozick’s “reflexive self-reference”. Aristotle might accept this (Cf. Eth. Nic. 1111a7–8), but that does not seems sufficient.
- 42.
From the Greek commentators on, many types of noûs in Aristotle have been distinguished. Cf. (ps.) Simplicius , in de An. 254, 31–4; 261, 2–24. Reeve (2000: 173) says that Aristotle has a person like me being the conjunction of two substances, active noûs and the human being. He explains that the noûs in us is able to err because it has superlunary matter that can mix and become sullied; hence error is possible for us (Reeve 2000: 58, 161, 169). I don’t see Aristotle recognizing two substances in me: he routinely holds that the soul is the form of the body, and the compound is the human being.
- 43.
- 44.
- 45.
Cf. Wedin 1988: 177–8.
- 46.
Sorabji (2005: 173) calls it “intellectual spotting”.
- 47.
Cf. Popper 1963: 58: “…why is it reasonable to prefer non-falsified statements to falsified ones?…from a pragmatic point of view the question does not arise, since false theories often serve well enough…because we search for truth (even though we can never be sure we have found it)…”
- 48.
Cf. On the Heavens 270b1–6.
- 49.
He holds that dialectic does not establish scientific principles inductively (Bolton 1991: 18–9). Cf. Soph. El. 17033–9. I would say, rather, that dialectic can contribute to their discovery as well as to their establishment.
- 50.
- 51.
- 52.
For a fuller account of practical noûs see Bäck 2009a.
- 53.
My account combines the two options distinguished by White (2004: 734).
- 54.
I hazard that being movable is a per se accident of bodies, in the second sense of ‘per se’ in Posterior Analytics I.4, as every body must be at rest or in motion .
- 55.
As I shall discuss somewhat below, there is some dispute whether Aristotle recognizes mathematical objects to have physical instances. Modrak (2001: 120) suggests that they are not perfectly exemplified in re but only at best as potentialities; in n. 3 she worries about 403a12–4.
- 56.
Being movable or being at rest does not seem to be part of the definition of such substances but rather an inseparable, per se accident or proprium .
- 57.
- 58.
Lear (1988: 244–5) claims that Aristotle uses abstraction differently in his account of arithmetic. There the abstraction specifies the unit to be used in counting, generally “the most natural description” of the object. In geometry the abstraction picks out which properties of the object are to be considered. He claims that Aristotle runs the two together in saying ‘considering an x with respect of its being a P’.
- 59.
- 60.
(Ps.) Simplicius , in de An., 277, 10–2: “All such things concerning/about which is the material for mathematicians are accidents.”
in accordance with Plato
’s usage at Mem. 450b20–451a2. For Plato the things in this world are homonyms
and mere appearances of the Forms, while not necessarily preserving their structures (
). [Prm. 133d2; Resp. X; Tim. 37d; Crat.431d–433c].
) is active and impassive like noûs
. However, although we can distinguish the faculty of judgement from the perceptive capacity, it is not clear that Aristotle would say that the former exists when the animal dies—except insofar as it is a function of noûs
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Bäck, A. (2014). Thinking. In: Aristotle's Theory of Abstraction. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 73. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04759-1_6
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