engleski

Perceiving that we are Not Seeing and Hearing: Reflexive Awareness in Aristotle

In De anima III.2, Aristotle speaks of “perceiving that we see and hear”, which is usually interpreted as some form of reflexive awareness. This reflexive awareness has been interpreted either as a type of content which is part of every act of first-order perception (Caston), or as a type of content which is supplied by second-order perception that accompanies first-order perception (Kahn, Johansen). In this paper I argue for the latter view by emphasizing that reflexive awareness crucially involves awareness not only of the activity of the special senses, but also of their inactivity. I show why awareness of inactivity of one’s senses is of vital importance for animals and I adduce evidence that Aristotle was alert to that fact. Following what Aristotle says in De somno et vigilia 2, 455a12-22, I ascribe reflexive awareness to the common sense, and I propose that the common sense is always active in the waking state, continually registering the incoming motions from all the different sensory channels, but also registering omission of incoming motions from particular sensory channels. Thus, we perceive that we are seeing and hearing, but also that we are not seeing or hearing, when it so happens. This presents us with two different cases: that of the co-occurrence of both tokens, and that of the occurrence of a token of second-order perception without a token of first-order perception. Moreover, I show that the common sense is inactive in sleep, which causes simultaneous inactivity of the special senses too. So, in sleep we are not seeing and hearing anything, but also we do not perceive that we are not seeing and hearing. Because no monitoring takes place in sleep, we are unaware of the fact that our senses are not exercised by external objects, which is one of the conditions for being deceived by dreams, since dreamers tend to take dreams to be perceptions of real things. So, sleep gives us the case of non-occurrence of both tokens. The remaining permutation is the case of the occurrence of a token of first-order perception without a token of second-order perception, which I suggest is exemplified by excessive stimuli coming from one sense and impeding the stimuli arriving from another sense. Given all these permutations, we must conclude that it is necessary to speak about two different tokens each of a different type, rather than of one token of two different types, as Caston has argued. Moreover, it is clear that tokens of first-order perception should be assigned to the special senses in cooperation with the common sense, and tokens of second-order perception to the operation of the common sense on its own, and this all amounts to an inner sense story, such as defended by Kahn and Johansen. Although reflexive awareness of inactivity of the senses would help their interpretation, Kahn and Johansen failed to take notice of it. At the end I discuss and defuse some possible objections for the view of reflexive awareness espoused in this paper.

Perception, sense, awareness, self, reflexive, common sense

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