이 글은 『영혼론』 3권 2장에서 제시되는 지각의 지각에 대한 아리스토텔레스의 논의를 다룬다. 이 내용은 아리스토텔레스의 의식 이론, 혹은 더 나아가 통각 이론을 재구성하는 데 가장 결정적인 텍스트로 간주되어 온 것이다. 이 글에서필자는 우선 아리스토텔레스의 논의의 구조를 분석한 다음, 지각의 지각이 어떤 능력에 의해 가능한가가 그의 관심사라는 전통적인 해석에 반대하는 캐스톤의 소위 '활동-해석'을 검토할 것이다. 그의 해석은 많은 후속 논의를 촉발한 흥미로운 제안을 담고 있기는 하지만, 궁극적으로는 텍스트의 기본 취지를 왜곡하고 있다는 것임이 드러날 것이다. 필자는 마지막 단락에서 지각의 지각을 공통감각의 작용으로 (...) 이해하는 해석을 소개하고, 정확히 공통감각의 어떤 측면이 지각의 지각과 밀접히 연관되어 있다고 볼 수 있는가에 관해서 하나의 생각을 제안할 것이다. 이 제안은 지각의 지각 능력이 지각의 비활성화에 대한 지각의 능력을 함축하며, 이것이 시간에대한 지각 능력과 밀접하게 연결되어 있다는 것이다. (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)

Plato's Socrates denies that he knows. Yet he frequently claims that he does have certainty and knowledge. How can he avoid contradiction between his general stance about knowledge and his particular claims to have it? Socrates' disavowal of knowledge is central to his defence in the Apology. For here he rebuts the accusation that he teaches – and thus corrupts – the young by telling the jury that he cannot teach just because he knows nothing. Hence his disavowal of knowledge (...) is important to Socrates. Why does he make this claim? And how then can he justify engaging in any philosophical activity at all? (shrink)

Resumen: La “visión escotópica” desarrollada por Aristóteles en De Anima II 7 es la primera formulación sistemática de este fenómeno clave para las actuales neurociencias. En la teoría aristotélica surge una aparente contradicción entre el “compromiso ontológico” de la oscuridad como privación y el “realismo gnoseológico” que considera visible esa misma oscuridad. Tomás de Aquino en su Sententia libri De Anima propone una interpretación que establece la relación analógica entre luz y oscuridad a través del color. Esta estrategia permite disolver (...) cualquier contrariedad y establecer una percepción visual de la oscuridad en sentido realista.: The “scotopic vision” developed by Aristotle in De Anima II 7 is the first systematic formulation of this key phenomenon for current neurosciences. In this theory an apparent contradiction arises between the “ontological commitment” of darkness as deprivation and the “gnoseological realism” that considers that same darkness visible. Tomás de Aquino in his Sententia libri De Anima proposes an interpretation that establishes the analogical relationship between light and darkness through color. This strategy allows to dissolve any annoyance and establish a visual perception of darkness in a realistic. (shrink)