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Kevin
 Oct 25, 07 - 4:47 AM |
Sifting Aristotle on Images from BK III, Ch. 3 of On The Soul & Other Works
ARISTOTLE (sifted for points on IMAGES): 1. "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)," 2. "...but when we merely IMAGINE we remain as unaffected as persons who are LOOKING at a PAINTING of some deadful or encouraging scene." 3. "If then IMAGINATION is that in virtue of which an IMAGE arizes for us..." 4. "is it (imagination) a single faculty or disposition relative to IMAGES in virtue of which we DISCRIMINATE and are either in error or not? 5. "IMAGINATION takes place in the absence of both (seeing and the faculty of sight). eg. in dreams." (where we seem to see images KB). 6. "...5) as we were saying before, VISIONS appear to us even when our eyes are shut. 7. "TO IMAGINE is, therefore (on this view) identical with the thinking of exactly THE SAME as what one in the strictest sense perceives." 8. "we IMAGINE the sun to be a foot in diameter..." 9. "its [imagination's KB] content (is) what can be perceived; 10. "The MOTION which is due to the ACTIVITY of sense, in these 3 modes of its exercize will DIFFER from the activity of sense; 11. "IMAGINATION must be a MOVEMENT resulting from an actual exercize of the power of sense." 12. "IMAGINATIONS remain in the organs of sense and resemble sensations." ------Sifted from Aristotle's ON THE SOUL, BK III, Chapter 3.--- Now a reference to IMAGES from ON INTERPRETATION, full quote:- ARISTOTLE:- Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, IMAGES, copies (homoiomata). (Aristotle, On Interpretation, Ch 1.; 16a lines 3-7; A Wikipedia translation.) E.M. Edghill's translation approved by W.D. Ross:- ARISTOTLE: Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have NOT the same writing, so all men have NOT the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these (ie. spoken and written symbols; KB) directly symbolize, are the same for all (MEN; KB) as also are those THINGS of which our experiences are THE IMAGES. [This matter has, however, been discussed in my treatise about the soul, for it belongs to an investigation distinct from that which lies before us; lines 7-8] Sifting this treatise which is actually an "investigation" of the LOGIC of sentences, or of the "sentential logic" of propositions, we get another reference by Aristotle to IMAGES. Requote ARISTOTLE (sifted): 13. Those THINGS of which our experiences are THE IMAGES (are THE SAME for all men, despite differences in spoken and written symbols; otherwise known as spoken and/or written languages). ARISTOTLE: The animals other than man live by appearances and memories and have but little of connected EXPERIENCE; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now from memory, EXPERIENCE is produced in men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single EXPERIENCE. [METAPHYSICS; BK I, Ch. 1 980b line 25 to 981a line 1.] From On Interpretation and Metaphysics, we may hear Aristotle say that EXPERIENCE involves IMAGES and that several remembered images (memories) of the same thing may eventually result in the capacity for a single EXPERIENCE (which would, again, involve some sort of IMAGE). Now we'll hear a "snippet" from Aristotle ON THOUGHT from his treatise ON THE SOUL, quote ARISTOTLE: "To the thinking soul IMAGES serve as if they were the contents of perception (and when it asserts or denies them to be good or bad it pursues or avoids them). That is why the soul never thinks without an IMAGE". ON THE SOUL; BK.III, Ch. 7; 431a lines 14-16. Again, ARISTOTLE: "It follows that the soul is ANALOGOUS to the hand; for as the hand is the tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things. Since, according to common agreement there is nothing outside and separate in existence from sensible spatial magnitudes, the objects of thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects and all the states and affections of sensible things. Hence (1) no one can learn or understand anything in the absence of sense, and (2) when the mind is actively aware of anything, it is necessarily aware of it along with an IMAGE; for IMAGES are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no matter. contd. KB |
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Kevin
Oct 27th, 2007 - 3:22 AM |
Re: Sifting Aristotle on Images from BK III, Ch. 3 of On The Soul & Other Works
Aristotle (repeated from earlier post): "...when the mind is actively aware of anything, it is necessarily aware of it along with an IMAGE; for IMAGES are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no matter. ARISTOTLE (continues): Imagination is different from assertion and denial; for what is true and false involves a synthesis of concepts. In what will the primary concepts differ from IMAGES? Must we not say that neither these (primary concepts KB), nor our other concepts are IMAGES, though they necessarily involve them? [ON THE SOUL; BK III, Ch. 8; 432a lines 1-14] (Finally), ARISTOTLE: The faculty of thinking then thinks the FORMS in the IMAGES... [On The Soul 431b line 2] This final translation is one which I would dearly like to see about 10 versions thereof, as in the diverse versions of the passage from On Interpretation, where Aristotle literally says "AFFECTIONS of the SOUL", in ancient Greek, which gets translated as "mental experience", by W.D. Ross's "generation" of translators. But Aquinas, writing about 16 centuries post Aristotle had almost the identical theory as Aristotle with a lot of "new" (then) medical information about the brain or "head". Aristotle, himself, actually thought that the heart was the closest bodily organ related to thought and that the brain was a "cooling mechanism" for the body. Actually brain structure is closely related to "cooling" since the brain only works in very narrow ranges of temperature. Too much heat and the brain is actually damaged (heat stroke). At reduced temperatures; eg. hypothermia; thinking becomes very confused; ie. "hypothermics" are confused persons. Aquinas speaks of such medical advances concerning the head and brain rather than Arisotle's "heart", when he speaks of interior senses, quote AQUINAS: "Therefore the power which in other animals is called the NATURAL ESTIMATIVE, in man is called the COGITATIVE, which by some sort of comparison discovers these intentions. Therefore it is also called the PARTICULAR REASON, to which the medical men assign a particular organ, namely the MIDDLE PART OF THE HEAD, for it compares individual intentions just as the intellectual reason compares universal intentions." [Summa I, Q. 78, Art. 4; Whether The Interior Senses are Suitably Distinguished?; from part of "I answer that..."] One would have to read the full article, objections, ON the Contrary, Answer and Reply to all the Objections to understand what Aquinas means by "intentions" which the senses do not perceive, but which animals must perceive to survive. Animals perceive them by means of their interior senses. Summa I, Q. 78, Article 4, features, in addition to the MEDICAL MEN... [The Muslims Averroes and Avicenna were "footnoted" (by Anton Pegis in his translation of Q. 78. Art. 4) as (or perhaps as to) the "medical men" mentioned by Aquinas. Averroes was certainly a Muslim Physician, as well as Jurist. Avicenna's medical qualifications are unknown to me.]... ...referenced and the HEAD mentioned, references to both "SENSIBLE FORMS" and to "SENSIBLE SPECIES". For example: AQUINAS: Oportet ergo quod animal per animam sensitivam non solum recipiat SPECIES SENSIBILIUM, *** praesentialiter immutatur ab eis; sed etiam eas retineat et conservet. PEGIS'S TRANSLATION: Therefore through the sensitive soul (animam sensitivam) an animal must not only receive the SPECIES of SENSIBLE things (non solum recipiat SPECIES SENSIBILIUM), when it is actually affected by them (cum praesentialiter immutatur ab eis); but also retain and preserve them (sed etiam eas retineat et conservet). DOMINICAN FATHERS TRANSLATION: Therefore an animal through the sensitive soul must not only receive the SPECIES OF SENSIBLE THINGS, when it is actually affected by them, but it must also retain and preserve them. [The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas; Second and Revised Edition, 1920 Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province; Online Edition Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Knight at NEW ADVENT website.] COMMENT: Note that Aquinas's Latin complex term, "SPECIES SENSIBILIUM", is NOT translated as SENSIBLE IMAGE in Question 78, Article 4., but as "THE SPECIES OF SENSIBLE THINGS" in both Pegis's translation and the Dominican Father's translation of Aquinas's "I answer that...". But in question 85, Article 2. the Dominican Fathers INCORRECTLY translate "SPECIES SENSIBILIUM" as "sensible-IMAGE", rather than as "sensible species", or as "the species of sensible things". Also note that Aristotle says requote: ARISTOTLE: when the mind is actively aware of anything, it is necessarily aware of it along with an IMAGE. ARGUMENT: When people are AWARE of anything, an equivalent expression, with the same meaning, would be to say that people or other animals PERCEIVE (are aware of) something. And people most certainly PERCEIVE, as well as imagine, various IMAGES. contd. KB |
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Kevin
Nov 13th, 2007 - 5:51 PM |
Re: Sifting Aristotle on Images from BK III, Ch. 3 of On The Soul & Other Works
Previously: From the previous post... ARISTOTLE: when the mind is actively aware of anything, it is necessarily aware of it along with an IMAGE. ARGUMENT (repeated): When people are AWARE of anything, an equivalent expression, with the same meaning, would be to say that people or other animals PERCEIVE (are aware of) something. And people most certainly PERCEIVE, as well as IMAGINE, various IMAGES. As Aristotle has previously said: Imagination is that in virtue of which an IMAGE arizes in us. So, too, with the actual PERCEPTION of an IMAGE. But in Summa I, Question 5 Article 2, Aquinas clearly writes that, quote: AQUINAS: ON THE CONTRARY: The intelligible species is to the intellect what the "species sensibilium" (sensible species, YES or NO; vs. sensible IMAGE, YES or NO) is to the sense. But the "species sensibilium" [sensible species? or sensible image?] is NOT WHAT is PERCEIVED, but rather THAT BY WHICH the sense PERCEIVES. Therefore the INTELLIGIBLE SPECIES is NOT WHAT IS ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD, but THAT BY WHICH the intellect UNDERSTANDS [ie. understands objects which are not "ideas", nor "species" but which are REAL THINGS and objects of both sense and intellect]. Sensible IMAGES are WHAT we perceive by means of the sense of sight. But the SPECIES by which we perceive images are NOT WHAT we perceive, as Aquinas clearly writes in Question 85, Article 2. Anyone who actually READS and UNDERSTANDS Aristotle's first treatise on LOGIC, entitled THE CATEGORIES, would never confuse a SPECIES with an IMAGE, for "species" belong to the thought Category of SUBSTANCE, to wit, 2NDARY-SUBSTANCE or, in other words, "SUBSTANCE-QUALITATIVELY-DIFFERENTIATED". The peculiar "mark" or note of SUBSTANCE, as a thought Category is that substances can admit or exhibit CONTRARY QUALITIES at different times. Aristotle places both PERCEPTION and KNOWLEDGE in the thought Category of RELATION, which always denotes extrinsic denomination and a CORRELATIVE TERM, whereas every other "thought Category", including SUBSTANCE, involves intrinsic denomination. The peculiar mark or note of the thought CATEGORY of RELATION is that correlatives are INTERDEPENDENT. For the most part they exist simultaneously and cancel each other, when one or other of the correlatives ceases to exist. However, Aristotle notes that both perceptible and knowable objects may exist INDEPENDENTLY of being known or perceived. But neither knowledge nor perception can exist independently of either a perceiver or a knower--- the CORRELATIVE being to a known or perceived object. The peculiar mark of QUALITY is that LIKENESS and UNLIKENESS are predicated with reference to QUALITY. And IMAGES are always LIKENESSES of substances, especially individual substances --- such as images of Socrates, Caezar, Aristotle, or your own mother or father --- ie. IMAGES of individual units and individual beings, which Aristotle calls primary substance. Genera and Species are 2ndary substances [substances qualitatively differentiated; In other words CLASSES or KINDS of primary substance]. But SPECIES are not individuals, whether the species are sensible or intelligible. SPECIES cover classes of substances which are QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENTIATED as "like" or "unlike" either species or individuals of the same or different species. The senses are peculiarly designed to apprehend the CONTRARY QUALITIES, charactersitically exhibited by individual units and individual beings (eg. This individual man, Socrates; this horse, Bucephalus; this god, Apollo) which Aristotle termed OUSIA, in his language. The term OUSIA (individual unit and individual being) was translated as SUBSTANCE in both classical and medieval Latin. The two terms (GENOS and EIDOS) which Aristotle described as "2ndary Substance", and defined as "SUBSTANCE QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENTIATED" were (1) transliterated into Latin as GENUS and translated into Latin as (2) SPECIES. So an IMAGE which is always of an INDIVIDUAL UNIT and of an INDIVIDUAL BEING is, once again, NOT a SPECIES (Latin term), nor an EIDOS (Greek term). Aristotle coined the term EIDOS (translated into SPECIES by the Latins) to CATEGORICALLY distinguish his DOCTRINE of inseparable EIDOS-MATTER composites (which medievals called FORM-MATTER composits) from Plato's doctrine of a separate (from matter) world of IDEAS (or "forma" in Latin) and to CATEGORICALLY distinguish Plato's IDEAS from his own EIDOS (Latin SPECIES) doctrine. In his own, translated words from Metaphysics, "Socrates did NOT separate the forms/(IDEAS)", as did Plato. Similarly to Socrates, Aristotle did NOT "separate the forms" either. Next post, we'll return to IMAGES, which are NOT "species" or "sensible species" and the faculty of imagination directly from Bk III of Ch. 3 of Aristotle's on the Soul Kevin |
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Kevin
Nov 13th, 2007 - 7:34 PM |
Re: Re: Sifting Aristotle on Images from BK III, Ch. 3 of On The Soul & Other Works
Kevin (wrote): Next post, we'll return to IMAGES, which are NOT "species" or "sensible species" and the faculty of imagination directly from Bk III of Ch. 3 of Aristotle's on the Soul. REPLY: Whoops that has already been done in a two part post entitled something to the effect "ARISTOTLE ON IMAGES, SENSE and PERCEPTION" or something like that. Let me check... CORRECTION: The 2 part posting was actually entitled Aristotle on Images, Imagination and Sense (1 of 2 AND 2 of 2), which previously concluded with, requote: ARISTOTLE: If then IMAGINATION presents no other features than those enumerated and is what we have described, then IMAGINATION must be a MOVEMENT resulting from an actual exercize of the power of sense. As sight is the most highly developed sense, the name PHANTASIA (imagination) had been formed from PHAOS (light) because it is not possible to see without light. And because IMAGINATIONS remain in the organs of sense and resemble sensations, animals in their actions are largely guided by them, some (ie. brutes) because of the nonexistence in them of mind, others (ie. men) because of the temporary eclipse in them of mind by feeling or disease or sleep. About IMAGINATION, what it is and why it exists, let so much suffice. [Aristotle; ON THE SOUL, BK. III, Ch. 3; 427a line 16 - 429a line 9] ARISTOTLE (Bk III, Ch. 4.): "Turning now to the part of the soul with which the soul knows and thinks..." etc. COMMENT: In Ch. 3, Book III, of ON THE SOUL, Aristotle writes of the perception and IMAGINATION of IMAGES, which men and some brutes share in common --- but NOT of SPECIES/ideas. Thus ended the previous posts, upon which no one has registered either a comment or criticism, for the simple reason that Aristotle is hard to understand. And he is difficult to understand when/if one does not understand the technical distinctions he formulated to RESOLVE, for him, "ancient" questions and disputes which neither Plato nor Socrates could resolve without Aristotle's distinctions. In so-called "modern philosophy" all those unresolved (by Socrates and Plato) disputes are entirely EVIDENT and repeated because of the same entirely "ancient" failure to distinguish IMAGES from IDEAS. As Aristotle said, circa 2400 years ago: ARISTOTLE: Indeed, THE ANCIENTS go so far as to identify thinking and perceiving ...[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. The beginning of his discussion in ON THE SOUL; BkI, Ch.2; 404b line 8 to 405b line 15 KB] 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: {snipped) COMMENT: It is DILEMMAS, of course, at present, because of the number of "modern philosophers" who completely MISSED both John Locke's error of conflating IMAGES with IDEAS and Descartes's equivalent error of supposing he had CLEAR AND DISTINCT "perceptions" of his CLEAR AND DISTINCT IDEAS. No doubt that Descartes could clearly and distinctly PERCEIVE the geometrical equations which he wrote upon vellum or whatever actual writing material he employed to EXPRESS his CLEAR and DISTINCT geometrical "ideas", or, for another example, he probably CLEARLY AND DISTINCTLY PERCEIVED the words he wrote when he wrote his "MEDITATION on METAPHYSICS", or "Mediation on Primary Philosophy". But the question to think about is:- Are words, or IMAGES (and we can imagine words), or existential objects, the same things as "IDEAS"??? Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Dr. Mortimer Jerome Adler, who's "Aristotelian Realism" is alleged to be a "big thing" at this site, all agree that NO is the correct answer to the above question. Neither words, nor IMAGES, nor "things" are IDEAS. But both "modern philosophers" and Aristotle's mentioned "ancients" can actually be CAUGHT IN THE ACT of literally saying that IMAGES are IDEAS (Locke) or that they can PERCEIVE "ideas" (Descartes). None of their (Locke's and Descartes's)subsequent CRITICS, or, alternatively, admirers, ever commented upon their "little error in the beginning". But they did CRITICIZE the subsequent "philosophical consequences" of making that "little error in the beginning". In the last century, Dr. Adler was the most articulate and vocal CRITIC of conflating (or failing to make the distinction between) IMAGES and IDEAS. Adler's criticisms were best made in his little book entitled TEN PHILOSOPHICAL MISTAKES. But he made his own error in that book, concerning IMAGES and IDEAS to which I'll turn in subsequent posts. Ivo pinpointed its source. Kevin |
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