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Book I Chapter 50

Chapter 50 · On perception

On perception, perceptible things, and whether perceptions are true.¹⁹⁰⁹

1 · Capacity and activity

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Epicurus: perception is ⟨both⟩ the part, which is ⟨the⟩ capacity, and the perceptual experience, which is the activity. Thus he uses the term in two ways, calling both the capacity and the activity perception.¹⁹¹⁰

2a · Soul and body in partnership

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Plato declares perception to be a partnership of soul and body directed toward external things. For the capacity belongs to the soul, the instrument to the body, and both apprehend external things through an impression.¹⁹¹¹

2b · A shared movement

And he says as follows in the Philebus:

“When soul and body come together in a single affection and are also moved together, would you not speak appropriately in calling this movement perception?”

“What you say is entirely true.”¹⁹¹²

3 · Four aspects of perception

⟨Aëtius.⟩

According to the Peripatetics, it is understood in four ways: that from which it proceeds, the ruling part; that through which it occurs, the instrument and sense organ; that in accordance with which it occurs, the activity; and that ⟨for whose⟩ sake it occurs, the perceptible object.¹⁹¹³

4 · Changes of the body

Leucippus and Democritus hold that perceptions and acts of thought are alterations of the body.¹⁹¹⁴

5.1 · The common sense

Aristotle holds that perception is an alteration of what is perceptible and a mean; and that common perception is the faculty that judges composite forms. To it all the simple senses contribute, each its own ⟨impressions⟩, and in it resides the capacity to pass from one thing to another, for example between a body’s shape ⟨and⟩ movement.¹⁹¹⁵

5.2 · Objects shared by the senses

It lies on the boundary between the rational and the nonrational, sharing in memory and intellect, and extends also to nonrational animals insofar as it possesses a certain analogy to thought. Shape is common to sight and touch; distance to sight and hearing; and movement, magnitude, and number to all the senses.¹⁹¹⁶

6 · An inward touch

⟨The⟩ Stoics call this common perception an inward touch, by which we apprehend ourselves as well.¹⁹¹⁷

7 · An uncertain attribution

⟨Aëtius.⟩

†Pellēs holds that there are more senses in nonrational animals.¹⁹¹⁸

8 · Senses without corresponding objects

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Democritus holds that the senses are more numerous than perceptible objects, but go unnoticed because the perceptible objects do not correspond to them in number.¹⁹¹⁹

9 · Equal numbers

The others hold that they are equal in number.¹⁹²⁰

10 · Perception of bodies

⟨Aëtius.⟩

The Stoics hold that perceptions are of bodies.¹⁹²¹

11 · Incorporeal structures

The followers of the ancients hold that perceptions are of the incorporeal structures associated with bodies, which they call shapes.¹⁹²²

12 · Images arriving from outside

Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus hold that perception and thought arise through images approaching from outside. For neither engages with anything without something impinging upon it.¹⁹²³

13 · Alteration or impression

Others hold that these arise through an alteration of forms or shapes ⟨or⟩ an imprint in the soul, at any rate through effluences rather than images.¹⁹²⁴

14 · Assent and apprehension

The Stoics hold that every perception is an assent and an apprehension.¹⁹²⁵

15 · Neither apprehension nor assent

The Academics hold that perceptions are neither apprehensions nor assents.¹⁹²⁶

16 · Accompanied by assent

The Peripatetics hold that perceptions do not occur without assent, but are not themselves assents.¹⁹²⁷

17 · Perceptions called false

⟨Aëtius.⟩

Pythagoras, Empedocles, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Metrodorus, Protagoras, and Plato hold that perceptions are false.¹⁹²⁸

18 · Sound but not exact

Those of the Academy hold that perceptions are sound, since through them it is possible to receive true impressions, but that they are not exact.¹⁹²⁹

19 · Proper and incidental objects

Aristotle holds that perception does not err concerning its proper object, but does err concerning what is incidental.¹⁹³⁰

20 · Perception and impression distinguished

The Stoics hold that perceptions are true, but that some impressions are true and others false.¹⁹³¹

1909.The editor restores this heading from Photius and the Laurentian table of contents; it is absent from the three witnesses designated FPL. Aisthēsis can mean the capacity for perception, an act of perceiving, or a particular sense. The chapter collects differing accounts, without requiring agreement among them. Decimal subdivisions within longer excerpts are modern comparison divisions.

1910.The supplied attribution is printed in Latin, with the locator Aëtius IV.8.2, Diels p. 394. The compressed wording identifies perception with a part, morion, and with its experienced activity; part is retained rather than silently replaced by organ. The two textual supplements are marked; the second includes a Greek final n as well as the article translated the.

1911.The editor supplies Aëtius IV.8.3, Diels p. 394. Koinōnia is participation or partnership; the report assigns different functions to soul and body. Phantasia is here impression or presentation, without the implication that its object is imaginary. The printed numbering 2a and 2b is preserved.

1912.The edition identifies Philebus 34a. Pathos means an affection or something undergone, not necessarily an emotion or suffering. The English untangles the compressed infinitive construction while retaining both shared affection and shared movement. The change of speaker is shown by a new paragraph.

1913.The supplied group attribution covers excerpts 3-6: Aëtius IV.8.4-7, Diels p. 394. The Greek gives four compressed relations rather than four complete definitions. Hēgemonikon is the ruling or governing part. The supplied hou completes the final relation, for whose sake; its counterpart is marked in English.

1914.Heteroiōseis are changes or alterations. The report places both sensing and thinking in the same bodily category; it does not here describe the mechanism of that change. A fuller account through incoming images follows in excerpt 12.

1915.Common perception, often called the common sense, here combines and judges what the individual senses supply. It does not mean ordinary practical good judgment. The difficult genitive aisthētou is retained as of what is perceptible, and mesotēs as a mean. Both printed supplements are marked; no gap is added after mean.

1916.The participles continue to describe common perception. The phrase posēn dianoias analogian indicates some resemblance to thought, without identifying animal perception with fully rational thinking. Every shared object in the printed list is retained; the account is the excerpt’s own classification.

1917.The supplied article is retained. Inward touch translates entos haphēn: the report uses tactile language for awareness directed within, including awareness of oneself. This closes the group of excerpts attributed to Aëtius IV.8.4-7.

1918.The name is corrupt: the single printed dagger is retained, and Pellēs merely transliterates the surviving letters. The apparatus discusses Aristotle and tentatively Empedocles, but neither is installed in the text. More lacks an explicit comparison. The editor supplies Aëtius IV.10.3, Diels p. 399; alternative interpretations of the sentence remain unresolved.

1919.The supplied attribution covers excerpts 8-9: Aëtius IV.10.5-6, Diels p. 399. The construction is compressed; the English provisionally takes the senses as the subject of go unnoticed. It retains the printed comparison and does not reverse it to make the objects more numerous. The force of analogizein, correspond, is uncertain.

1920.The sentence supplies only the contrast others and the adjective equal. Its two terms are understood from excerpt 8: senses and perceptible objects. The report does not identify these other thinkers individually.

1921.The supplied group attribution covers excerpts 10-16: Aëtius IV.8.8-14, Diels p. 395. The genitive sōmatōn identifies the objects of perception as bodies; it does not by itself say that the perceptions are bodies. The following report offers a different account of what is perceived.

1922.Logoi is provisionally structures, a term broad enough to include formal relations or configurations. The verb and perceptions are understood from excerpt 10. The printed reference to the ancients is retained. The neuter relative haper does not agree straightforwardly with masculine logōn, and the compressed construction remains difficult.

1923.Eidōla are images; in this report they arrive from outside and occasion both perception and thought. The final phrase leaves the impinging thing unnamed. Image would fit the context, but it is not added to the Greek. Neither refers to the two activities just named.

1924.The omitted subjects, perception and thought, continue from excerpt 12. The supplied or separates alteration from imprinting in the soul. The relation of the final phrase to these alternatives is compressed and provisionally rendered. Effluences translates aporrhoiai, things flowing away from a source; the Greek distinguishes them here from eidōla, images.

1925.Synkatathesis is assent, acceptance of what is presented; katalēpsis is apprehension or a cognitive grasp. Both are predicated of every perception in this compressed report. The next two excerpts distinguish alternative relations between perception and assent.

1926.This is a denial that perception itself is either of the two things asserted in excerpt 14. It does not here deny that perception occurs. Academics names members of the Academy collectively; no particular thinker or period is specified.

1927.The distinction is between accompaniment and identity. On this report, assent is necessary to perception, yet perception and assent are not the same activity. The three reports in excerpts 14-16 are retained in their sharply contrasting form.

1928.The supplied attribution covers excerpts 17-24: Aëtius IV.9.1-8, Diels p. 396 and following. All eleven names are retained. This exceptionally compressed grouping does not preserve the qualifications of each thinker’s position. It should be read as the collector’s report, not as a substitute for the more extended arguments quoted later in the chapter.

1929.Hygiēs, literally healthy, is rendered sound; akribēs is exact or precise. The distinction allows perception to yield true impressions without giving it unqualified accuracy. The report speaks of possibility, not of every impression being true.

1930.The proper object, to idion, belongs specifically to the sense in question; the incidental, to symbebēkos, is something associated with what is sensed. The report distinguishes their reliability rather than declaring every judgment prompted by a sense infallible.

1931.The distinction depends on treating aisthēseis and phantasiai as different categories. Impression is broader here than a particular act of sensing. The report’s categorical assertion about perceptions remains alongside the qualifications applied to impressions.