De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 32: Sensing Our Sensing and Cross-Sensory Discrimination

Transcript
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I see, you know, to compare it to Heisenberg, Heisenberg, of course, is working in physical sciences, right, the experiment that first got going and so on. And Heisenberg said, when we move into a new area of the physical sciences, we don't have to give up, he says, in the attempt to understand, but we may have to learn a new meaning, he says, in the word understanding. Interesting way of putting it, huh? He realizes that even within physical sciences, the way of understanding is not going to be the same in different parts, huh? And the way of understanding in mechanics is not the same as the way of understanding in quantum theory or in relativity theory, huh? But if you're accustomed to just one method, one way of proceeding, that seems to be the only way of proceeding, huh? And the other way of proceeding is either, you know, wrong or, you know, defective, huh? Incomplete, huh? Sometimes I understand, you know, liberal education is the kind of loose notion people have nowadays of what it is. But liberal education is opposed to a very highly specialized education, right? That in liberal education, you're introduced to many different kinds of knowledge, right? And many different ways of thinking, right? Yeah. And therefore, you're not enslaved to one method alone. And therefore, you're used to freedom there, right? But, you know, if you don't have that experience, then you'd be like Descartes, everywhere, seeking a, what, kind of mathematical way of proceeding, huh? Or like Renard, everywhere, seeking this experimental method, huh? That's part of, you know, the way you have corruption, say, even in theology, you know, the theology tried to, in the 20th century and even before, they tried to imitate the experimental method. If you read the Enlightenment there, the philosophy of the Enlightenment there by Rens Kassir, the whole Enlightenment tried to take the method of Newton and make it the method of every science, of all human knowledge, huh? You see? And, but there you see that general thing I was talking about, right? If you haven't seen, you know, a reasonable way of proceeding, right, in more than just one particular part of human knowledge, that seemed to be the only reasonable way of proceeding. I mean, you have to proceed that way everywhere, or, you know, in our brother Richard's high school physics book, they had a quote there from Lord Kelvin, you know, the famous British physicist. He says, I don't care what the matter is, if it's not measurable, it's not scientific, you know? Well, everything has to be measured, right? So this seems to be the only way. St. Thomas even says with Catholic faith, some people are brought up in the Catholic faith, and maybe everyone around them is, they almost think the Catholic faith is something known by natural understanding. Yeah. So now let's just exemplify something even more universal than what he's talking about here, but it's the first example, you might say, right? Both of our knowing the same thing in different ways, or by different kinds of knowledge, knowing the same thing, right, right? But also, it's exemplifying this difficulty our mind would have, right? Of separating things that are never separated in our experience. Brother Richard, I remember talking about marriage a bit there. When you marry somebody, you realize that in different households, in different families, things are done differently. And so the way things are done in your family, you know, seems like the only way of doing these things, right? And maybe it's some things you've done better in your family than your spouse's family, but vice versa, there might be some things they did that were better, right? But then you can compare these things. But if you just had intermarriage, you know, brother, friend, sister, and so on, among other problems, you'd always be doing things the same way, right? And you'd never, you know, maybe improve, right? Ways of cooking things, right? Now, in chapter two, Aristotle's going to begin to examine some acts, some kinds of sensing, they seem, that we experience, that don't seem to maybe pertain to the, what, five outward senses, huh? And he's going to investigate two things, huh? And from the first, he's going to be more hesitant to reason from it to an inward sense. But from the second, he will very definitely reason to it, huh? Okay. Now, what are these two that he's going to be talking about? Well, the first of them is mentioned there in 274. Since however we sense that we see and hear, it is necessary to sense that one sees, either by sight or by a different sense. And then he's going to investigate whether it's by the same one. In other words, do I sense not only color, but to also sense that I see color? Do I have within me not only experience of color, but also an experience of what? Of seeing. And likewise, huh? Do I sense not only sound, when I hear a sound, right? But do I also sense my hearing? I'm not talking about seeing and hearing now, as reason talks about them universally, but this seeing, right? My seeing, this painting or something, right? Or my hearing, the music of Mozart, right? Do I sense, in other words, not only the music of Mozart, or sense the painting, but I also sense my, what? Seeing paintings. My hearing music, right? My tasting food, and so on, right? Okay? So he's going to be investigating that, right? Is it by my eye that I know not only color, but the seeing of color? Is it by my ear that I know only sound? Or do I also know by my ear what it is? I don't know what it is, but do I sense my hearing and sound? Or is it requires something within, right? Okay? Thomas is very definite that it does. Aristotle is not so definite here, right? Okay? He's going to investigate that first. Now, on the bottom of 29 there, 285, and especially 286 there, I'm going to talk about another thing that we experienced, and that is that we just... terminate in a sense-like way, not only between, let's say, sweet and bitter, which you do by the sense of taste, and green and red as you do by the eye, right? But we also distinguish between red and sweet, or white and sweet, huh? We distinguish between them? And there is going to be a problem about saying that one of the exterior senses does this, huh? Does the sight know the difference between white and sweet? And I talk about sugar, and I talk about white and sweet, and so on. I distinguish between the whiteness of sugar and the sweetness of sugar. But does my sight, my eye, know that difference? My eye doesn't know such sweetness at all, right? But it does know white, huh? Does my sense of taste taste the difference between white and sweet? They can't taste white at all, right? Well, then the question will arise, well, can the two of them together see the difference? If I've heard Mozart, and you've heard rock and roll, but I haven't heard rock and roll, and you haven't heard Mozart, can we know together the difference between the two? Or does one and the same man have to listen to both, and then say, hey, I can see a difference, right? So if one sense knows white, and the other sense knows sweet, but no sense knows both, what do we know the difference between the two? Okay? So Aristotle is asking now, is there some more inward sense, huh? Whereby we know the difference between white and sweet. We know the difference between color and sound, right? But that's the second one he's going to investigate, and that would be the second half. And there he's going to be more definite about it requiring an inward sense, that they have to come back in a way, right? To a common center. Which you'll call the common sense, but Icelandic's called the central sense, because when you say common sense, you might think you mean what those are common sensibles. Or other meanings of common sense, right? But called the central sense, right? Okay? So he's going to be arguing that we sense the difference between white and sweet, but we don't do it by any of the outward senses. Even by two of the outward senses together. But before he investigates that, which is one of the reasons more definite as an interior sense, he examines this other thing. Right? That we seem to sense not only color, but we seem to sense our seeing of color, the concrete there. Right? So I've been sitting in the museum there, and I've been looking at that painting there, right? So in a sense way, I'm not only aware of the painting, but I'm also aware of my, what, seeing of the painting, right? Like, is that by the eye that I know that? So he's going to investigate that first, huh? But after he arrives at the central sense, then he's going to eventually ask, now, is that reason? Or, is reason something different? And reason is something different from this central sense, huh? Okay? So he's going gradually from the outward, inward, you might say, huh? And he's going to talk about emotion and about will after he talks about sense and reason, huh? In a sense, they're even more inward, right? Okay? It's kind of interesting, the word heart, the way we use the word heart, and I see it in scripture too sometimes. Heart is sometimes used for what? Yeah, yeah. Say, the desiring power, right? Okay? But sometimes it's used for knowing powers too. So the heart is something within, right? When we say, you know, I want you to learn that by heart. That's memory, right? The internal senses, huh? When I say my heart's not in it, I'm using heart there in the sense of my, what? Will, yeah. But I just refer the word heart because it seems to indicate something in the interior, within, huh? But the heart in sense of the heart of the matter, the heart in the sense of the will is even more within than the reason. The reason is closer to the senses. And, you know, you see that, you know, reflected later on when you say the Trinity because God the Son proceeds by way of God understanding himself. And the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of God loving himself. But the Holy Spirit, even the way he's named, huh? Seems to have less of a name, right? Than the Son or the Word, huh? Because Spirit is a name in a way common to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And Holy is common to, you know? Holy, Holy, Holy, right? But it's a little harder to understand in a sense, the Holy Spirit than to understand the, what? The Word, if I can. Both very difficult, obscure, you know? But I mean, what about human beings, you know? Is it easy to know somebody's mind or his heart and do your will? Which is more hidden from you, my mind or my will? Huh? Well, on one hand, you know, you're willing also to communicate. Yeah. But do we know more that we have faith, let's say, take the logic of our choosing, or do we have charity? You know, Scripture says, you know, man knows not whether he'd be worthy of love or hate, right? Okay? And they say that we're not, we can't be sure about having charity in the way we can be sure about having the faith, huh? As if the mind, you know, in some way and its condition is more known to us, huh? Than the heart, huh? And, and, which is more known to me, what I think or what my intentions really are and what I do, huh? Am I teaching people out of, you know, love of truth as a common good? Are the good of the minds I'm instructing? Am I doing it out of vanity, you know? You know? I've been admired. Huh? Even intentions, what do the saints speak of, you know, we're purity, we're talking about purity of intention, right? Huh? You know, it's a very hard thing to know whether you have that purity of intention, right? Why are you doing these things, huh? Doing these things for the honor and glory of God, you know? It's not as clear, right? It's more clear to me what I think than what my intentions are and what I do, huh? Okay? So we're kind of going from the outward inward, huh? That's so interesting, huh? Even going from the, the plant powers, right? Huh? They're more outward in the sense, huh? Than the sense powers, huh? And the sense powers, huh? And the sense powers are more outward, especially the outward senses, as we call them, than the, what? Than the reason, right? But the knowing powers are not as outward, in a sense, as the, are more outward than the, than the desiring powers, huh? Yeah. So, for the aspect of going from the... ... ... The more known to what is less known, right? So we're starting to raise the possibilities here now, going back to 274 here at the beginning of chapter 2. Sense however we sense that we see and hear. I know it's the sensing that we see and hear is not the same thing as understanding what seeing is, right? Understanding what hearing is, right? It's in the particular, right? So when I hear the music of Mozart, you know, and the light or pleasure in hearing the music of Mozart, and so I'm inclined to go back and hear more of the music of Mozart, right? I'm very much aware of the pleasurable sensation that I have, right, of the music of Mozart, right? So I'm kind of sensing in the concrete there, you might say, right? My own hearing, huh? And the wine connoisseur, he's tasting the wine, you know? He's getting to know the taste of the wine, you know, but he's enjoying the sensation of the wine, huh? Right? So he's talking about that concrete, individual sensation of the wine, huh? You're sensing that in a way, right? A pleasure that's in that, huh? You've seen these paintings of the Hudson School, you know? Hudson School painting there, the landscape painting. They're very restful, you know, they're very nicely done. So I'm kind of sensing my seeing of those paintings, huh? Is it by my eye that I sense my seeing? Or by my ear that I hear my hearing? Do I sense my hearing? Or is it by something more within, right? That's knowing them, huh? And I raised a question there, huh? But the same sense will be of sight and of the underlying color. Now, sight there means the act of sight, huh? Whence either two will be of the same or the same of itself. Now, what's the problem he's raising there, right? See? Can I really sense my seeing the painting without in some way sensing the painting? Because seeing is not really knowable without something seen, right? So I couldn't really know my seeing without in some way knowing what I'm seeing. So it seems that what sees color, what sees the seeing, must also see the color, right? Well, then you have another power in us that knows the seeing, and the eye doesn't know the seeing, but only color. But that inward power has to know color too, right? See the problem? Okay. Once either two will be of the same, there will be two things knowing color, the eye, knowing only color, and this inward knowing the seeing of the eye, and at the same time, the color known by the eye. So you have two things knowing color, or else you have the original one knowing both color and its sensing of the color, right? There's a certain problem there in saying that you have another sense that knows the seeing of the eye, and the eye doesn't know its own seeing. Because that other sense would have to know color, and then you get redundancy, two powers knowing. More, he says in 276, if a different sense would be the sense of the seeing, if no power knows its own, what, act, right? But some other power knows it. Well, then you have to have another power to know that act. You have to end up with infinity of powers, right? Well, if you're going to avoid that infinity, you have to have the same thing with knowing itself. Whence will one have to do this in the scenes in the first, what, case, right? Yet there's a difficulty in saying this, he says in 277. For a sensing by sight to seeing, while color, or what has color, is seeing, if something will see the seeing, the first seeing thing will also have, what, color, right? If the object, the private object to define sight is color, right? How could it see its own seeing if that's something other than color, right? It's not common sensible either. Then you have to either say what? I was going to suggest two things, he said. Either you're going to have to say that there's two kinds of seeing, one of which is sensing color, and the other is sensing what? Seeing. Or you're going to have to say that seeing, sensing seeing in a way is sensing color. And this goes back to what he said before, you know, the senses are acted upon by their objects, right? And so in a way, the senses are their objects, right? So in a way, the eye is colored, although not originally. Now he argues on the one hand in 278, that there is more than one kind of sensing. It is apparent, therefore, that sensing by sight is not one. For even when we do not see, we discern by sight both darkness and light, but not in the same way. I think he's referring to the fact, you know, when you wake up in the middle of the night or something, do you see something? No, no, right? See? So you're not sensing any seeing, right? You're not sensing any color, right? But you're kind of knowing, right? You're lack of seeing at that point, huh? But other times you're aware of your seeing, right? All right, people, you know, they wake up in the middle of the night, did you hear something? No, I didn't hear anything. I heard something. You know, like somebody's spoken to the house, something like that, you know? Kind of strange, you know, when we first moved to our house, you know, from the apartment, I think I was there before my wife was there, and you just spend the night there, you know, in the strange house. And you hear these sounds often that, you know, you wouldn't notice at all now, you know? But every house has some kind of sound to it. I don't know what causes the sound, you know, but it's the wind, the settling of the house and all these things, you know? And it's amazing, you know, how you hear these things at first night, you're over a south, you're hearing things, you know? Okay? But no, but when somebody asks you, did you hear it, did you hear that? I say, sometimes you, what, are aware of your hearing, right? Sometimes you're not, huh? Now, the other way of looking at it, in 279, is to say, well, maybe seeing is not altogether outside of that object of sight, which is color, right? Because seeing is, what, receiving color, right? And therefore seeing, in a way, is being colored, although not in the way the exterior object is colored, right? But in a kind of immaterial or spiritual way, as we say. Moreover, even the thing seeing is as if colored, right? As we pointed out earlier, especially at the end of the last book, for each sense organ is receptive of the sensible without the matter, right? Whence even the absence of the sensibles, huh? The sensations and imaginings are in the sense organ, huh? So, you know, you look at something for a while, you know, and I close this and I still kind of see the black, right? I still have the black kind of inside me, right? And I close my eyes now, right? I'm not really seeing you outside of me, but that black kind of remains, right? I'm not getting into these obscure questions about, you know, we speak of the aftertaste of a wine, whatever that means. The act of the sensible and of the sense are the same in one, but being is not the same. same for them. Being means what? Not the same there in what definition, right? Okay. Now, this goes back to what we saw even in natural philosophy. In acting upon and undergoing, right? Are they really two different realities? Is my kicking you, for example, and you're being kicked? Are they really something different? Or am I pressing down upon the pillow, right? I put my head down the pillow that night. My head presses down the pillow, right? Or depresses, you might say. The pillow, right? Is my depressing the pillow and the pillow being depressed, are they two different realities? No, which you might define a little bit differently, right? Right, huh? Okay. Because one would be called acting upon, the other would be called, what, undergoing, right? Okay. Is my pushing the glass, and it's being pushed, two different realities? You sometimes want to speak as if, you know, my pushing was the cause of its being pushed, right? As if they were two different things, one the cause, one the effect, huh? Can you separate me? Can you separate me, the pushing of the glass, and it's being pushed in that way? Unless you think just the movement of your arm, right? Yeah. If you look at the movement of the glass as being in the glass from me, then it's being pushed, right? If you look at the movement of the glass as from me into the glass, right, then it's pushing. Is my lifting the book, it's being lifted? It's the same thing, huh? Well, since sensing is a being acted upon, right, undergoing, right? Acting upon and undergoing, here, are the same, but they differ in what? Definition, huh? Okay. So the expression, the sensible in act? Yeah, and the sense in act are the same, yeah. The sensible in act is... But the different definition, yeah. You don't mean, like, actually color, but you mean actually causes the same, right? Yeah, you can say the color acting upon my eye, and it's being seen by my eye, is the same. Reality is a different definition, right, huh? In the same way that acting upon and undergoing doing. So he says the act of the sensible and of the sense are the same in one, but being is not the same for them. Now, that's kind of confusing the way Aristotle used the word being there, but I think it's kind of become a contraction for him, you know. Usually he says that, what was to be, you know? And so, I mean sound according to act and hearing according to act. For what has hearing may not be hearing, and what has sound does not always sound. Yet, whenever what is able to hear is at work and what is able to sound sounds, then the hearing according to act and the sound according to act come together. Which things one would call the one hearing, the other, what? Sounding, right, huh? The one is an acting upon and the other is a, what? Being acted upon, huh? So, that's a sounding. Maybe a problem with naming these things. And he himself says that the Greek can always name both the act of the, what, sensible, right? Acting upon us and the reverse, right? But in this case, there seems to be a different name, right? Sounding in act, like the radio is on or it's off. Yeah, but it's got to be acting, it's acting upon my ear, right? The sound, huh? Yeah. Sound and act. But he would say that the radio is sounding when it's on, even though everything's gone, nobody's hearing it. I think he's thinking of the sounding as something that is actually acting upon the ear, yeah. It's stimulating, might say, you know, in English, like, stimulating my sense organ, right? That stimulating of my sense organ is the same thing as my sensing, huh? Do you would say audible or something? Well, that might name it too much in potency, right? Audible means, what, the hearable? Was able to be heard, right? But he's taking it now and act, huh? So he's going back in 280, he says, you know, to what we've learned about motion, and, again, I would translate these in English as, not activity and passion, but acting upon and what? Undergoing, right, huh? Okay, you're acting upon and being acted upon, right? These are the same thing as motion, huh? That's the reason why Thomas, you know, raised that question there when he talked about the categories, right? If motion, activity, and passion are all the same thing, why are acting upon and undergoing two different categories, right? And, well, activity, acting upon and undergoing are naming the thing with reference to something outside of you, right? And so in acting upon, you're being named in a way from the thing you're acting upon, huh? And in undergoing, you're being named in a way from the one who's acting upon you. So there's some extrinsic denomination that you have in the last six categories, huh? But the motion is such we put in whatever the motion is in. Like locomotion and wear and becoming hot and quality and so on. Because there you're considering just what's intrinsic, right? If then the motion and acting upon undergoing are in the one being acted upon, huh? It is necessary also that the sound according to act and the hearing according to act are in what is according to potency, huh? This is like a particular kind of acting upon undergoing, right? Or another kind, maybe, huh, of acting upon undergoing, huh? For the act of the active and the motive comes to be in the suffering of undergoing. And he makes a kind of corollary there. Whence is not necessary for the mover to be, what? Moved, right? Because motion, and even the acting upon is the only thing being moved. Therefore the act of what can sound is the sound or sounding, that of what can hear, the hearing or the hearkening. For hearing is twofold and sound is twofold. And the same account is found in the other senses and sensibles. In potency and in act, right? In a built-in act. For just as the activity and the passivity are in what suffers, but on what acts, thus also the act is sensible, and that of the sensitive are in the sensitive. But in some cases they are named, he says, sounding and hearing. In some, one of the two is unnamed. For the act of sight is called vision, but the act of color is what? Unnamed, right? And the act of what can taste is tasting, but the act of flavor is what? Unnamed, right? Unnamed, right? Unnamed, right? Unnamed, right? Unnamed, right? Unnamed, right? Unnamed, right? Unnamed, right? The act of the sensible and the sensitive of R1, while their being or definition is different, is necessary for what are in this way called hearing and sounding to be destroyed and conserved together, and flavor then and taste any of this similarly. But this is not necessary in the case of things set according to potency. So you can have the sense, right, without what is able to sound, right, and vice versa. But the previous students of nature did not say this well, opining that the white and the black are nothing without sight, nor flavor without taste. And of course that comes back in the moderns, they're always talking about, you know, people, you know, is there sound in the forest, right, and there's no ears there, right, whereas also you're not seeing the distinction here between sound in ability and sound in what, act, right, and because there's no sounding and act without hearing at the same time. They say in no way is there sound in the forest, right, without an ear to hear it, right? Verestal says, yes, there is. But in another sense, there is no sounding, right, without hearing. In this they spoke rightly and in this not rightly. For a sense and sensible being said in two ways, in some cases according to potency or ability, in other cases according to act. In the latter cases, what is said occurs, occurs, but in the others it does not occur. But those speakers spoke simply about what is spoken of, not simply, right? So, but like what we said later on about, earlier, about food, you know, is it like or unlike the Fed, right? And there you had a disagreement of opinion among the predecessors, right? But in the beginning it's unlike the Fed, in the end it's like the Fed. It's not exactly the same distinction, but there's something like this, right? He's saying that in a way, in one way there is sound without the air, right? In another way there is no sound without the air. There's sound in ability or potency, but not in act. But this ability or potency is not nothing, right? So does your food have flavor before you eat it? Before you taste it? Or is it flavorful only when you're enjoying its flavor? Maristal says, they seem to deny that it has any flavor, right? And it's not being tasted, right? And that's true in one way, but in another way it's not true, right? But notice, there's something able to be tasted there, right? But not actually tasted, until you're tasting it. So if by flavor you mean what is tasted, right? What's tasted only when it's tasted, right? But there's something tasteable there before, it's tasted. Otherwise it will make a difference what you eat, really, as far as taste is concerned, right? It will make a difference what this guy put on now. The sound was not there, at least in the ability in some way, right? But this just gone, if I want my hearing to be pleasant, right? I want to suffer. In the original sense, I had put on some other tips. It was a saint who used to mix their food with ashes, you know, so they wouldn't give any sense, pleasure, you know, to distract them with higher things. It seems there's this kind of confusion for the word to name the things. So if you say, you know, is the color there in ability, when I'm not seeing it, but in act, when I'm seeing it, you wouldn't say that. Like the fire, you wouldn't say the fire's hot in ability, when I'm not feeling it, but it's hot in act when I'm feeling it. You would say it's heating in ability, if there's nothing around it, you wouldn't bring the things there. There might be a difference between the sense of touch, too, and the other senses, the way he spoke of the sense of touch before, right? You know, when he spoke of the thing of the properties of the body as such, right? Back in the chapter there. The tangibles, therefore, are the differences of body as body. So you might see those as being even more in the body, right? Before they're felt, right? And the sound, right? But I don't think, you know, when he talks about the sound and ability there, he's thinking about the fact that I can clink this glass, you know? I don't think he's going back that far, is he? I don't think so, but that's kind of what we would think of by sound and ability. Yeah. Yeah. Seems like sound, too, we don't really have a name, it's, as I think of sound, I would like a flavor. Yeah. We don't have any... Well, we'll put it this way here. Is sound what is heard, or is sound what is able to be heard? Let's put it that way. Who would you answer that question? I would say what is able to be heard. You wouldn't distinguish a hear a style. No, not with the words sound, I wouldn't. I think a hear a style is doing it, in a sense it's distinguishing there between what is able to be heard and what is actually heard. And what is able to be heard is sensible in ability, right? And what is actually heard is sensible in act, right? Except that sensible is... But the sensible in act, you know, the sensible is the object of sense, and the object of sense acts upon this object, right? So the sensible in act means the acting upon of the sensible upon the sense, right? And that's the undergoing of the senses, and the sensing of the senses, right? I think Gershaw's coming to that now because he's not, he's already had a sense taught that before in the second book, right? But he's coming back to it here because he's trying to point out that, in a way, sensing is being sensible. That...