Empedocles’ B100 contains an analogy between a girl handling a clepsydra and respiration. This article argues that proposals to establish Love or Persephone as the girl’s respiratory equivalent are rendered unlikely by differences between their respective causal roles. Rather than her gender, this article emphasises the importance of the girl’s age: Empedocles required a playful child to handle the clepsydra. This child’s play results in the extra phase of submerging the clepsydra while the upper vent is open, which Empedocles needed (...) to form a parallel for the first static phase of respiration. (shrink)

While most interpreters take the opening of De Anima III 2 to be an oblique reference to some sort of conscious awareness, I argue that Aristotle intends to explain what I call ‘joint perception’: when conjoined with Aristotle’s subsequent claim that perceiving and being perceived are the same activity, the metaperception underpins the perception of a unified object. My interpretation is shown to have a more satisfactory account of the aporiai that follow. While I argue that the immediate focus of (...) the metaperceptual account is joint perception, it may also be applicable to other kinds of complex perception, which I briefly consider in the closing section. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 3, pp 257 - 292 It is commonly assumed that Aristotle defines a sense by reference to its ability to perceive the items that are proper to that sense, and that he explains perceptions of unities of these items, and discriminations between them, by reference to what is called the ‘common sense’. This paper argues in contrast that Aristotle defines a sense by reference, not only to its ability to perceive the proper items, but also (...) to its ability to discriminate between them, and thus aims to show that Aristotle’s theory of sense perception is basically a theory of perceptual discrimination. (shrink)

How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the neural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenal consciousness? We can see the problem in stark form if we ask how we could tell whether representations inside a Fodorian module are phenomenally conscious. The methodology would seem straightforward: find the neural natural kinds that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness in clear cases when subjects are completely confident and we have no reason to doubt their (...) authority, and look to see whether those neural natural kinds exist within Fodorian modules. But a puzzle arises: do we include the machinery underlying reportability within the neural natural kinds of the clear cases? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then there can be no phenomenally conscious representations in Fodorian modules. But how can we know if the answer is ‘Yes’? The suggested methodology requires an answer to the question it was supposed to answer! The paper argues for an abstract solution to the problem and exhibits a source of empirical data that is relevant, data that show that in a certain sense phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility. The paper argues that we can find a neural realizer of this overflow if assume that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include the neural basis of cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified by the explanations it allows. (shrink)

Aristotle's Rhetoric defines fear as a kind of pain or disturbance and pity as a kind of pain . In his Poetics, however, pity and fear are associated with pleasure: ‘ The poet must provide the pleasure that comes from pity and fear by means of imitation’ . The question of the relationship between pleasure and pain in Aristotle's aesthetics has been studied primarily in connection with catharsis. Catharsis, however, raises more problems than it solves. Aristotle says nothing at all (...) about the tragic catharsis in the Poetics except to state that tragedy accomplishes it. Though he gives a more complete account of catharsis in the Politics, the context of this passage is so different from that of the Poetics that its relevance is questionable. A more promising, but largely neglected, approach to Aristotle's theory of tragic pleasure and pain is through a study of his psychological works. Here, Aristotle describes a number of emotional and cognitive responses to kinds of objects that include works of art. These descriptions support an interpretation of the Poetics according to which a tragedy is pleasurable in one respect and painful in another, and pity and fear, though painful and not in themselves productive of pleasure, are nevertheless essential to the production of the oikeia hēdonē, ‘proper pleasure’, of tragedy. This interpretation has the advantage of not depending on a particular view of catharsis. It also makes much better sense than alternative views, once its seemingly paradoxical aspects are explained with the help of the psychological works. (shrink)

Aristotle'sRhetoricdefines fear as a kind of pain (lypē) or disturbance (tarachē) and pity as a kind of pain (2.5.1382 a 21 and 2.8.1385 b 13). In hisPoetics, however, pity and fear are associated with pleasure: ‘ The poet must provide the pleasure that comes from pity and fear by means of imitation’ (τ⋯ν ⋯π⋯ ⋯λέου κα⋯ ɸόβου δι⋯ μιμήσεως δεῖ ⋯δον⋯ν παρασκευάζειν14.1453 b 12–13). The question of the relationship between pleasure and pain in Aristotle's aesthetics has been studied primarily in (...) connection withcatharsis.Catharsis, however, raises more problems than it solves. Aristotle says nothing at all about the tragiccatharsisin thePoeticsexcept to state that tragedy accomplishes it. Though he gives a more complete account ofcatharsisin thePolitics, the context of this passage is so different from that of thePoeticsthat its relevance is questionable. A more promising, but largely neglected, approach to Aristotle's theory of tragic pleasure and pain is through a study of his psychological works. Here, Aristotle describes a number of emotional and cognitive responses to kinds of objects that include works of art. These descriptions support an interpretation of thePoeticsaccording to which (1) a tragedy is pleasurable in one respect and painful in another, and (2) pity and fear, though painful and not in themselves productive of pleasure, are nevertheless essential to the production of theoikeia hēdonē, ‘proper pleasure’, of tragedy. This interpretation has the advantage of not depending on a particular view ofcatharsis. It also makes much better sense than alternative views, once its seemingly paradoxical aspects are explained with the help of the psychological works. (shrink)

Sense experience, naïvely conceived, is a way of knowing perceptible properties: the colors, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures in our perceptual environment. So conceived, ordinary experience presents the perceiver with the essential nature of a property like Sky Blue or Middle C, such that how the property appears in experience is identical to how it essentially is. In antiquity, as today, it was controversial whether sense experience could meet the conditions for knowledge implicit in this naïve conception. Aristotle was a (...) partisan in this debate, but his position is poorly understood. This dissertation examines how Aristotle’s perceptual psychology responds to ancient challenges to the naïve conception, and so articulates his defense of perceptual knowledge. -/- Aristotle’s defense relies on an ontology of “perceptual qualities"—a core class of perceptible properties—according to which those qualities, despite having a perceiver-independent essence rooted in the physics of causation and affection, nevertheless can be present in experience as they essentially are. Chapter 1 defends this realist and objectivist reading against competing interpretations, which overlook a crucial distinction between perceptual qualities and perceptual objects. Chapter 2 presents Aristotle’s ontology as a physicalism that uncharacteristically allows for perceptual qualities to appear in experience as they essentially are. -/- This ontology informs Aristotle’s account of the psychological conditions under which perceivers actually are presented with the essence of perceptual qualities. The locus of this account is an obscure passage where Aristotle purports to show that the senses “discriminate” perceptual qualities because the senses are “mean states” (An. 2.11, 424a5–7). Chapter 3 develops a comprehensive interpretation of the sensory mean state, which Chapter 4 uses to elucidate Aristotle’s argument for sensory discrimination. Sensory discrimination turns out to be a process in which the essence of a perceptual quality comes to be present in the affection it produces in a perceiver. For Aristotle, this shows that sense perception meets a condition for knowledge that his predecessors, including Plato, thought it could not meet. For in his view, but not in theirs, sense experience shares in both the truth and the essence of the qualities it perceives. (shrink)

Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of action has recently veered toward an intellectualist position, according to which reason is in charge of setting the goals of action. This position has recently been criticized by an anti-intellectualism revival, according to which character, and not reason, sets the goals of action. I argue that neither view can sufficiently account for the complexities of Aristotle’s theory, and suggest a middle way that combines the strengths of both while avoiding their pitfalls. The key problem for (...) intellectualism is that Aristotle explicitly states reason cannot set the goals of action. The key problem for anti-intellectualism is that he also holds that the soul’s rational part must guide and prescribe over the non-rational part. I propose indirect intellectualism, a promising middle path. (shrink)