Abstract

According to Plato's Theaetetus and Philebus an act of sense-perception consists in a bodily disturbance produced by a sensible object and a corresponding disturbance in the soul. The bodily disturbance is best thought of as a state of sensory stimulation in the appropriate sense organ. The resulting disturbance in the soul is an act of perceptual awareness of the sensible object at the other end of the causal chain. The perceptual awareness involved is classificatory in the sense that the sensible object appears to the perceiver in some sensible character, e.g., as red or sweet. ;This interpretation runs counter to the currently prevailing interpretations of a central argument in the Theaetetus against the claim that sense-perception is knowledge . The crucial premise in this argument is that sense-perception cannot grasp the being of its object. On recent interpretations the inability to grasp being is the inability to frame simple propositions of the form, 'a is F', and by implication the general inability to be aware of anything, insofar as to be aware of something implies being aware of it as something, i.e., under a concept. ;I argue, contrary to this view, that for Plato sense-perception's inability to grasp the being of its object is its inability to locate its object in an objective world and not the sort of conceptual impoverishment that would exclude even minimal awareness from an act of sense-perception. Since, as is widely held, Aristotle allows minimal classificatory content in sense-perception, the position I defend reestablishes a point of similarity between the two. ;Moreover, the elements of the Platonic account are essentially preserved by Aristotle, if one allows for the difference between Plato's soul-body substance dualism and Aristotle's form-matter property dualism. The bodily disturbance in the Platonic account corresponds to the physiology appropriate to the material description, while the psychic disturbance in the Platonic account, which constitutes perceptual awareness, corresponds in the Aristotelian account to the form of an act of sense-perception. ;On Aristotle's formal characterization the perceiver becomes like its object. This is to be interpreted, along the lines suggested by the Greek commentators, to mean that the perceiver becomes representatively like its object, and constitutes Aristotle's reinterpretation of the traditional dictum that like is known/perceived by like