Appendix 17. - (247)

This was Aristotle's theory: in the human being, there is something called common sense which judges sensations. It alone can do this because it alone feels what all the other senses feel. But even a particular sense feels and judges in a more restricted field, that is, it judges the various sensible things which it can perceive. Hence, Aristotle's rather vague proposition: Sensus proprius participat aliquid de virtute sensus communis [the more particular sense shares to some extent in the power of common sense]. How this power-sharing could come about is a mystery.

It was equally difficult, in Aristotle's philosophy, to explain how common sense, which is single, could have a number of potencies and several essentially different operations. It required real ingenuity to explain this feature by sound, lucid arguments although it could easily be evaded by use of an example. Aristotle therefore opted for this second, much easier way. He found a suitable exemplar in the image of a centre and of radii which all meet at a centre. So common sense, which is essentially single, receives sensations from the different sense organs. In so far as it receives many modifications, it feels; in so far as it is one, it judges (De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 3, 4). It seems that for a long time philosophers were quite happy with this solution. Nevertheless, it would have been simple to note some important differences between the centre of a circle and common sense: the centre is inactive and, although the terminus of many radii, it does not judge them, it does not act upon them and it does not actually receive them in itself. Finally, it does not constitute a centre of itself, but only because our minds refer the radii to that point. Per se, it is only a point. All the linear connections it acquires are due to our thinking, not to something actually connected with it.

But even in the concept of circle, centre and radii, we still have to explain how thought is able to create a multitude of relationships in a single thing such as a circle. The very likeness of a centre taken to explain by analogy the thought of universals or of relationships between things is no clearer than thought itself, since it is merely a particular instance of thought. When we have explained how we perceive relationships and universals, we have explained how a point is for us a centre and terminus of a number of lines. But a centre is inexplicable unless the first explanation is presupposed. The example is therefore misleading, and only appears to clarify the problem. It provides no explanation of the way in which a single faculty can both feel the sensible things proper to various sense organs and judge them, that is, compare them to one another, note how they are alike and how they differ, and judge them as pleasing or displeasing. All these are real operations: they are not mere relationships which we link to common sense by means of our understanding, as in the case of a centre which we view as the terminus of a number of lines. Even if it were easy to understand how a single thing may have multiple relationships with other things, it is nonetheless difficult to grasp how a potency may have a number of terms and, while remaining a single potency, bring about numerous essentially distinct operations, if by potency we mean a particular force of the soul, a force specific and separated by the unity of its term or its specific operation. There is no doubt that feeling and judging, if two essentially distinct operations, as Aristotle in fact holds, require distinct faculties. The potency of feeling is named after the act of feeling just as the potency of judging is named after the act of judging. If feeling and judging are essentially the same thing, why attribute judgment to sense? This is non-sense, as the English would say. It means attributing to sense something which is not sense. In this case, the word judgment could be banished from human language and replaced by sense or sensation, without anyone noticing the difference, which is patently impossible.

What kind of argument persuaded Aristotle to endow the sense with the faculty for judgment?

This argument may seem ingenious. However, if we take just one of its fallacies, we see that it is based upon a false assumption, that is, that in a sense, the feeling of the feeling is inevitably contained. What does the expression 'to feel we feel' mean? It can have no meaning unless it means a reflection by the soul on its own sensation. When the soul turns in upon itself to discover its own condition, and finds it is experiencing a feeling, we normally say that it feels it is feeling. But this reflection by the alert mind upon itself is, strictly speaking, thought. The soul, therefore, thinks it feels, it does not feel it feels. It thinks about its own sensation. In this case, sensation is the object of this thought. On the other hand, thought itself is the act.

We must not therefore confuse the object of the act with the act itself. Sensation, which is the object, is external and passive; thought, by which we reflect on this sensation, is internal, active and voluntary. Thus, when we say we feel that we feel, we are using the first we feel metaphorically in the place of we think, and the second we feel in its literal sense to express the actual sensation. Sense qua sense does not feel it feels, it feels, and nothing more. A sensation arises simultaneously with the modification occurring in a bodily organ and does not involve any reflection upon self. If a sensitive organ then receives the same or another stimulus, it is activated again, but nothing is produced similar to reflection. We have only a new impression and sensation which our mind finds similar to the first, but completely distinct in its essence from the first. However, because we are also endowed with the faculty of thought, it is often impossible not to think contemporaneously about it, not to notice it, not to register it. Whenever we notice sensations, we not only feel, but think we are feeling sensations; we never just experience a feeling and describe this metaphorically as 'feeling we feel.' It is very easy, therefore, for us to attribute to entia endowed with feeling alone what we experience within ourselves.

This I think is what happened in Aristotle's argument. Having noticed that every time we realise we are feeling, we are also thinking, that is, reflecting on our feeling, he assumed that reflecting upon self was the essential characteristic of sense. He was thus led to endow sense with a corresponding reflection inseparable from judgment because, when I reflect upon what I feel, I am merely making a judgment upon myself. I say to myself, 'I am experiencing a sensation.' This is to form a judgment, to think.