[PDF] Aristotle On The Sense Organs eBook

Author : T. K. Johansen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 26,90 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0521583381

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This book offers an important study of Aristotle's theory of the sense-organs. It aims to answer two questions central to Aristotle's psychology and biology: why does Aristotle think we have sense-organs, and why does he describe the sense-organs in the way he does? The author looks at all the Aristotelian evidence for the five senses and shows how pervasively Aristotle's accounts of the sense-organs are motivated by his interest in form and function. The book also engages with the celebrated problem of whether perception for Aristotle requires material changes in the perceiver. It argues that, surprisingly to the modern philosopher, nothing in Aristotle's description of the sense-organs requires us to believe in such changes.

Author : A. Towey
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 11,32 MB
Release : 2014-04-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1780938845

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In his work On Sense Perception, Aristotle discusses the material conditions of perception, starting with the sense organs and moving to the material basis of colour, flavour and odour. His Pythagorean account of hues as a ratio of dark to light was enthusiastically endorsed by Goethe against Newton as being true to the painter's experience. Aristotle finishes with three problems about continuity. First, in what sense are indefinitely small colour patches or colour variations perceptible? Secondly, which perceptible leap discontinuously like light to fill a whole space, which have to reach one point before another; and do observers of the latter perceive the same thing if they are at different distances? Thirdly, how does the central sense permit genuinely simultaneous, rather than staggered, perception of different objects? Alexander's highly explanatory commentary is most expansive on these problems of continuity. His battery of objections to vision involving travel, which would lead to collisions and interference by winds, inspired a tradition of grading the five senses in respect of degrees of immateriality and of intentionality. He also introduces us to paradoxes of Diodorus Cronus about the relations of the smallest perceptible to the largest perceptible size.

Author :
Publisher :
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 16,58 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Perception
ISBN : 9781472551597

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"In his work On Sense Perception, Aristotle discusses the material conditions of perception, starting with the sense organs and moving to the material basis of colour, flavour and odour. His Pythagorean account of hues as a ratio of dark to light was enthusiastically endorsed by Goethe against Newton as being true to the painter's experience. Aristotle finishes with three problems about continuity. First, in what sense are indefinitely small colour patches or colour variations perceptible? Secondly, which perceptible leap discontinuously like light to fill a whole space, which have to reach one point before another; and do observers of the latter perceive the same thing if they are at different distances? Thirdly, how does the central sense permit genuinely simultaneous, rather than staggered, perception of different objects? Alexander's highly explanatory commentary is most expansive on these problems of continuity. His battery of objections to vision involving travel, which would lead to collisions and interference by winds, inspired a tradition of grading the five senses in respect of degrees of immateriality and of intentionality. He also introduces us to paradoxes of Diodorus Cronus about the relations of the smallest perceptible to the largest perceptible size."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Author : Pavel Gregoric
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 38,66 MB
Release : 2007-06-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199277370

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Gregoric investigates the Aristolian concept of the common sense, which was introduced to explain complex perceptual operations that can't be explained in terms of the five senses taken individually. Such operations include perceiving that the same object is white and sweet, or knowing that one's senses are inactive.

Author : Anna Marmodoro
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 19,53 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199326002

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"Marmodoro's monograph engages with Aristotle's views on a philosophically challenging question regarding perception, which has been central in the history of philosophy and is very much the focus of current debates in a number of philosophical and psychological disciplines: How do we become perceptually aware of objects in the world? Despite the significance of the question, the ways in which ancient philosophers have addressed it have only just begun to be be explored. There is a great wealth of insight on this question to be found in Aristotle, regarding our ability to perceive items in our environment, which he develops through his very demanding metaphysics, and Marmodo explores these insights in depth here. Aristotle's attempts at accounting for our awareness of complex perceptual content were highly original, drawing on and building on the metaphysics he has developed elsewhere in his works, but have not been adequately explored to date"--

Author : Joseph Magee
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 16,67 MB
Release : 2003-06-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0313092923

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In recent years the majority of scholarship on Aristotle's philosophy of mind has concentrated on his account of sensation and has generally sought to find in his ancient account insights applicable to contemporary materialistic explanations of mental life. Challenging cognitivist and functionalist interpretations, this volume argues that Aristotle believed the mind to be unmixed, or separate from the body. Through careful textual analysis of De Anima and other key texts, the author shows that the Greek philosopher made a clear distinction between perception-an activity realized in material sense organs-and thinking-a process that cannot occur in any material organ. This innovative interpretation of Aristotle's theory of cognitive activities is a worthy contribution to an ongoing debate.

Author : Aristotle
Publisher :
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 38,22 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Philosophy
ISBN :

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In this timeless and profound inquiry, Aristotle presents a view of the psyche that avoids the simplifications both of the materialists and those who believe in the soul as something quite distinct from body. On the Soul also includes Aristotle's idiosyncratic and influential account of light and colors. On Memory and Recollection continues the investigation of some of the topics introduced in On the Soul. Sachs's fresh and jargon-free approach to the translation of Aristotle, his lively and insightful introduction, and his notes and glossaries, all bring out the continuing relevance of Aristotle's thought to biological and philosophical questions.

Author : Fiona Macpherson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 12,29 MB
Release : 2011-05-09
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0195385969

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A Collection of Classic and Contemporary Articles on the Philosophy of the Senses --

Author : Mark Eli Kalderon
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 38,75 MB
Release : 2015-01-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0191027731

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Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of historiography. He considers the phenomenology and metaphysics of sensory presentation through the examination of an ancient aporia. Specifically, he argues that a puzzle about perception at a distance is behind Empedocles' theory of vision. Empedocles conceives of perception as a mode of material assimilation, but this raises a puzzle about color vision, since color vision seems to present colors that inhere in distant objects. But if the colors inhere in distant objects how can they be taken in by the organ of sight and so be palpable to sense? Aristotle purports to resolve this puzzle in his definition of perception as the assimilation of sensible form without the matter of the perceived particular. Aristotle explicitly criticizes Empedocles, though he is keen to retain the idea that perception is a mode of assimilation, if not a material mode. Aristotle's notorious definition has long puzzled commentators. Kalderon shows how, read in light of Empedoclean puzzlement about the sensory presentation of remote objects, Aristotle's definition of perception can be better understood. Moreover, when so read, the resulting conception of perception is both attractive and defensible.

Author : Pavel Gregoric
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 41,9 MB
Release : 2007-06-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0191608491

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Apart from using our eyes to see and our ears to hear, we regularly and effortlessly perform a number of complex perceptual operations that cannot be explained in terms of the five senses taken individually. Such operations include, for example, perceiving that the same object is white and sweet, noticing the difference between white and sweet, or knowing that one's senses are active. Observing that lower animals must be able to perform such operations, and being unprepared to ascribe any share in rationality to them, Aristotle explained such operations with reference to a higher-order perceptual capacity which unites and monitors the five senses. This capacity is known as the 'common sense' or sensus communis. Unfortunately, Aristotle provides only scattered and opaque references to this capacity. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the exact nature and functions of this capacity have been a matter of perennial controversy. Pavel Gregoric offers an extensive and compelling treatment of the Aristotelian conception of the common sense, which has become part and parcel of Western psychological theories from antiquity through to the Middle Ages, and well into the early modern period. Aristotle on the Common Sense begins with an introduction to Aristotle's theory of perception and sets up a conceptual framework for the interpretation of textual evidence. In addition to analysing those passages which make explicit mention of the common sense, and drawing out the implications for Aristotle's terminology, Gregoric provides a detailed examination of each function of this Aristotelian faculty.