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Kevin
 Oct 23, 07 - 1:36 PM |
Aristotle on Images, Imagination and Sense (1 of 2)
ARISTOTLE: There are two distinctive peculiarities by which we characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, perceiving. Thinking, both speculative and practical, is regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something that IS. Indeed, the ancients go so far as to identify thinking and perceiving [as do Hobbes, Berkeley and Hume among "moderns" KB] ...[Empedocles and Homer are Aristotle's examples]... They all look upon thinking as a bodily process like perceiving, and hold that like is KNOWN as well as PERCEIVED by like, as I explained at the beginnning of our discussion [ie. ON THE SOUL; BkI, Ch.2; 404b line 8 to 405b line 15 KB] ARISTOTLE'S REFUTATION OF HIS PREDECESSORS: Yet they ought at the same time, to have accounted for error also; for it (ie. error KB) is more intimately connected with animal existence [eg. plants and minerals do not make errors KB] and the soul continues longer in the state of error than in that of truth. They [ie. The "ancients"; "moderns" too KB] cannot escape the dilemma: EITHER (1) Whatever seems (to be KB) is true (and there are some who accept this) or (2) error is contact with the unlike, for that [ie. error as "contact with the unlike" KB] is the opposite of the knowing of like by like. But it is a received principle that error as well as knowledge in respect to contraries is one and the same. ARISTOTLE'S CRITICAL DISTINCTIONS That perceiving and practical thinking are NOT identical is, therefore, obvious; for the former [perceiving KB] is universal in the animal world, the latter [practical thinking KB] is found in only a small division of it [ie Human animals]. Further speculative thought is also distinct from perceiving --- I mean that in which [ie. speculation KB] we find rightness and wrongness --- rightness in prudence, knowledge, true opinion, wrongness in their opposites; for perception of the SPECIAL objects of sense is always free from error and is found in all animals, while it is possible to think truly and falsely, and thought is found only where there is discourse of reason as well as sensibility. For imagination is different from either perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or judgment without it [ie. imagination KB]. That this activity [ie. imagination KB] is not the same kind of thinking as judgment is obvious. For imagining lies within our own power whenever we wish (eg. we can call up a PICTURE as in the practice of mnemonics by the use of mental IMAGES), but in forming opinions we are not free; we cannot escape the alternatives of falsehood or truth. Further when we think something to be fearful or threatening, emotion is immediately produced and so too with what is encouraging; but when we merely IMAGINE we remain as unaffected as persons who are LOOKING at a PAINTING of some deadful or encouraging scene. Again within the field of judgment itself we find varieties --- knowledge, opinion, prudence and their opposites; of the differences between these [knowledge, etc. and their opposites KB] I must speak of elsewhere [Aristotle speaks of them in the Nichomachean Ethics; Note that knowledge, opinion and prudence have opposites and that knowledge has CONTRARY opposites which are (1) ignorance and (2) error. KB] Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part IMAGINATION and in part JUDGMENT; we must, therefore, first mark off the sphere of IMAGINATION and then speak of JUDGMENT. If then IMAGINATION is that in virtue of which an IMAGE arizes for us, excluding metaphorical uses of the term, is it a single faculty or disposition relative to IMAGES in virtue of which we DISCRIMINATE and are either in error or not? The faculties in virtue of which we do this [ie. discriminate relative to IMAGES KB] are sense, opinion, science, intelligence. That IMAGINATION is not sense is clear from the following considerations: (1) Sense is either a faculty or an activity. eg sight or seeing; IMAGINATION takes place in the absence of both. eg. in dreams. (2) Again, sense is always present [ie. As a faculty] imagination not. If actual imagination and actual sensation were the same, imagination would be found in all the brutes; this is not held to be the case; eg. it [imagination KB] is not found in ants, or bees, or grubs. (3) Again, sensations are always true, imaginations are, for the most part, false. (4) Once more, even in ordinary speech, we do not, when sense functions precisely with regard to its object, say that we IMAGINE it to be a man, but rather when there is some failure of accuracy in its [sensation's KB] exercize. And (5) as we were saying before, visions appear to us even when our eyes are shut. Neither is imagination any of the things that are never in error: eg. knowledge or intelligence; for IMAGINATION may be false. |
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