Notes from Yves Simon

Philosophy of Knowledge - selected readings. Ed. by Rolande Houde; Jospeh P Mullally J.B. Lippincott company NY 1960.

Y.R. Simon: An Essay on Sensation - p. 55-95

LOOSELY TRANSCRIBING

56. "worst difficulties of present subject originate in our inability to achieve the experience of a sensation free from association with images, instinctive judgments, memories and thoughts.

- sensation center of a complex, fro which it can't be extracted, except by rational analysis (cites Bertrand Russel)

- Experientially considered, snesations always exist in teh vital unity of wholes (...) by which we attribute to senses the apprehension of things which rae neither sense qualities nor modes of sense qualities (I see the father of our friend" e.g.)

-Good to call "perception" the complex act by which these things are apprehended and "sensation" the act, whatever its nature may be, which lies at the core of perception and makes the difference between having and not having things present in sense experience (his mother - remember vividly, events - personality - but denied privlege of seeing her, "and oh, the differenece to me!" The study of sensation is, so to say, the study of this difference.

2 contrasts will help to express the basic difficulties raised by the immesurable distance that we experience between sensing and object and merely imagining, or remembering, or understanding it: the contrast of the physical and the psychical and the contrast of cognition and affection.

p. 57 - Is sensation a psychical process (a distinct one?)

- has been raised by most modern philosophers in the framework of Cartesian dualism.

- Negative answer inevitable, b/c in Descartes whateve ri snot extension is spirit, and if an operation does not consist in a movmeent, it is a thought of some kind.

Thus any component of senation which proves irreducible to local motion belongs to the world of thought, where it occupies a low rank. Sensation, as a psychical relaity, sis not possesd of a distinct nature.

It is a confused and unreliable thought

(ftnt 2 Confused and unreliable i it is expected to let us know what things are, but "sufficiently clear and distinct" (Meditation VI) and dependeable insofar as it yields informaiton about hte useful or harmful effects of surrounding agents upon our bodies. The deceptiveness of senation is held compatible with the truthfulnes of God, "for using the sens i order to know is using them for a purpose that God did not intend them to serve." Gilson - "Rene Descrates, Disocurs de la method, Texte et commentaire (paris: Vrin, 1939, p. 367)

The second contrast is best approached by comparing, among objects of knowledge, those which can stir affection with those which cannot (interesting actually becuase of hte associations that I made between passions and particular reason) Mathematical entities can't stir affection because they involve a condition incompatible with real existence. (ftnt 3 - cites Aristotle's Met. 3.2.996a29; 13.3 1078a31; Aquinas (ST I.5.3 ad 4; Cajetan on this text; John of St. Thomas Cursus theologicus i., disp. 6 a. 2, (ed solesme, vol. 1 532ff). Although matehmatical objects do not admit of goodness, they admit of beauty. Indeed, they are famous for their beauty, and more htan ever among contemporary mathemeaticians. They cnanot stir affection, but they do stir admiration.)

True, it is possible to bring about in the real world things called circles or cubes (...) Mathematical entitties are neither good nor bad, nad final causality plays no part in mathematics. (...)

On the contrary, where there is affection, some good or evil condition is referred to in an essential manner. Whatever is affected is moved toward its final cause or away from it. The question is whether the sentient, as such, bears this characteristic of the affected subject. Indeed some senasations, viz. phys. pleasure and pain, are commonly described as affective, and concerning the other sensations the least that can be said is that they do not exist with an affective tone of great significance. (... descriptive...) p. 58 We are not asking whether affection is a thing of importance in our sensorial relation to the world: this question obviously calls for an affirmative answer (ftntrefers to Whitehead "adventures of Ideas" "It must be distinctly understood that no prehension, even of bare sensa, can be divested of its affective tone, that is to say, of its character of a 'concern' in the Quaker sense. Concernedness is of the essence of perception."

Rather, we want to know whether the feature by reason of which to see and touch is a thing so much different from imagining, remembering or understanding boils down to a way of being affected or includes irreducibly an act of cognition.

(HMmmmmm very interesting - I never thought to conflate the two so well!!!! - what Aquinas says about these things you see in the first part in dist. between app and appet. that appet. has to do wiht a movement)

Considered in terms of change, sensing is first of all describable as a way of being acted upon, a way of undergoing influences fro the physical environment, a sort of passion. (interesting. think of Aquinas' senses of passion - pati - air, intelligence - but notes more of hte nature of perfection - very interesting scale...) But let it be remarked at once that a process involving passivity is not necessarily exclusive activity. To say that the sentient undergoes the influences of stimuli and objects is by no means to suggest that sensation is merely a passin. A subject may well be passive in one respect and in another respect exercise an activity of its own (this also is interesting - there is no sense of the "proportion" which is discussed in the very last questions of the supplement to the summa in comparing - oops I was confused - not proportion to each other so much as Reply to Objection 1. Although it is more noble to be active than passive, there is the same proportion between patient and passivity as between agent and activity; and accordingly there is equality of proportion between them. before we even try to get to "unity" - the sensible is the sensing in a way insofar as it is the species - is it the species? which is sensed???)

Further, "to be acted upon" admits of two meanings. THere are two kinds of passivity, which are unequal as well as qualitatively differnt, for they embody in diverse degrees the esence of unergoing, of being acted upon, of being passive, of being subjected to external influence. There are cases in which teh determination received is incompatble iwth the determinatuion prevously possessed. When this occurs, assion has the character of a disturbance; it is a complex event in which the loss of a state is a necessary and essential condition for the acquiring of a new state (His language is very interesting here - syncretic of Stoics - perhaps of Descartes, definitely of aristotelian heritage - and definitely more)

(example) All over physical nature the law of displacement previals. uman life does not escape this law, and much can be learned by inquiring into the reasons why men resent it so bitterly (again interesting presuppositions).

By the law of complex becoming and displacement, a destruction is the price of every new perfection. choice, in this world involves sacrifice. Every departure is an image of death. Our lives are spent fighting our way through never-ending series of incompatibilities. THe remarkable thing is that we dislike so much a state of affairs which is so obviously natural. (Wow this has been a schizophrenic way of putting it)

In Aristotle's words the more detemriante sense of hte expression" to be acted upon"

p. 59

refers to the destruction of one contrary by the other: this remark is strikingly borne out byt he fact that in various languages the word smenaing passivity generally conote suffering. But hte passion involved in sensing is not a destruction, rather it is the maintenance, the progress, the salvation of the passive subject under the influence of a friendly agent which resembles the patient as act resembles the ability to be in act. (really anthropomorphic - and soteriological! does it really "save?")

(ftnt 5 - De Anima - 2.5. 417b) Also cites "Die Lehre des Thomas von Aquino De Passionibus animae in quellenanalytischer Darstellung (Munster i. w., Aschendorff, 1912, Beitrage zur Geschichte der PHilosophie des mIttelalters. Bd. XI. Hft. 2 - "excellent book" of Matthias Meier - Notice that the division fo passion, both in Aristotle and in St. Thomas, is sometimes bipartite and sometimes tripartite. Three members are distinguished by subdivision of heteronomic passion into the case in which the loss does not outweigh the gain - designated by the common expression "passion properly so-called" and the case in which it does "passion most properly so-called" in the language of St. Thomas (yes but it didn't sound as dorky when he said it) All emotions are, by reason of the physiological disturbances (!)which are part of their essence (!) passions properly so-called; but whereas joy is only a passion properly so-called, sadness is a passio most properly so-called (passio propriissime dicta)

When the sense opens to the world of physical appearnces, what it receives is its own actualizatin, its own perfection, its own fulfillment acc. to its own law (..)

The possibility of being acted upon (a blind person) by the colors and shapes and other vis. properties of the world gives him a chance to be what he is. In this distinguished way of being acted upon, the passive subject is changed into itself (what?)St. Thomas uses the expression "passio properly so-called" to designate the "being acted upon" which implies a complex change, a displacement (!) of form by form and a destruction. He uses the expression "passion improperly so-called" (!!!!! Don't remember "improper" ANYWHERE - but generic or communius perhaps and proprie et propriissime) to designate the "being acted upon" which consists in a simple accomplishment and a pure progress (!). The passion properly so-callled may also be described as heteronomic, (?!?!?) and the passion improeperly so called as autonomic (?!?!?!) (okay - i get it - coming from another and coming from oneself - but even in a perfection - it doesn't come from oneself!!! This is the whole point why the human being is not his or her own end - not self-actualized in anyway even the intellect requires light!!!)

The first tenet of Aristotle's doctrine on the senses is that sensation is an autonomic passion. (it's kind of hard to take him credibly now... but should come back to it - at least he cannot get the referneces wrong and he is excellent with having many diverse references which will be extremely helpful. Maybe I'll just cite his references)

p. 60 -61 refs.

ftnt 7 points out that Aquinas holds no alteration of sensorial organs in highest senses (sight and hearing) - I.78.3 - this is the footnote where he applies Maritain's term of "philosophical imperialism" t Aquinas inasmuch as "philosophers were insufficiently aware of the possibilities open to the non-philosophical analysis of nature they were badly tempted to decide by philosophic ways issues, which, if decidable at all, have to be treated by the methods of nonphilosophic sciences.

Another citation in this footnote - (no phys. alteration in sight - expresed by Aquinas in his "commen. on met. 1 l. 1. But in the Com. on Sense and Sensible objects les. 4 he writes in a discussion of Democritus "since vision is not an act of the soul save through a corporeal organ, there is no reason for wonder if it is caused, in some way, by a corporeal passion: this does not mean that the corporeal passion stself is the same as vision."

ftnt 8 (61) describing "opposition between immanet and transitive action" (Aristotle has no names for the two kinds of ation. St. Thomas uses parphrases, actio quae transit in exteriorem materiam, actio quae manet in agente. The expression actio immanens appears at the latest a short itme after Aquinas - in the Summa of the Whole Logic of Aristotle of uncertain authorship and spuriously classified under Aquinas' opuscula.

(no prod. of a thing distinct from the act itself - thus the act remains within the potency, as vision in the seeing, contemplatio in the contemplating, and life in the soul, and happiness also, for it is a kind of life (Metaphysics 9.8. 1050a23)

p. 66 - comes to the conclusion that "From all this it follows that sensation is an incomplete form of immanent action" (ftnt 14.

De Anima 2.5.416b33 and many other little citations - and Aquinas ST. I. 27. 5 "The act of sensation.... cannot be reckoned as wholly removed from th sphere of eternal actions; for th act of senation is perfected yb the action of the snesible thing upon sense."

(...) "It is one nad the same act which is immanent on the part of hte sense and transitiv eon the part of hte thing that is sensed "(ftnt 15 - de an. 3.2. 425b26 "the activity of hte sensible object and that of hte percipient sense is one and the same activity."

"Let us now focus our inquiry on sensation considered as the union of a thing alive with some aspect of its environment. We have described it

p. 67

as a contrast between the passivity of hte sense and the common ways of being passive, and naother contrast between teh act of sensing nad hte common ways of being active. These descriptions suggest that it is worth determining whether there is a corresponding contrast between the union of the sense with its object and the common ways in which a subject unites with a state or quality.

Analogoy of intelligence (boring)

p. 68 cites Averroes - commentary on aristotle's de anima

p. 69 ftnt 17 charles sherrington who divides receptors of reflex actions into three fields: the extero-ceptive, (made of receptors stimul. from outside) intero-ceptive (mad eof receptors stimulated buy bodies contained in the digestive track) and the proprio-ceptive (made of receptors adjusted to stimulations originating in the organism itself. ("Integrative action fo th enervous system - 1906 yale univ. press)

Roland Dalbiez (Psychoanalytical method and th doctrine of freud "it is quite natural to model the division of snesations upon that of reflexes" and to speak of extero-ceptive, intero-ceptive and proprio-ceptive sensations. Philosophically, what matters is whether the stimulus and object of sensation does or does not belong to the phys self perceived as such and the relevant divis is bipartite (viz. extero and intrer- on one hand and proprio-cept on the other)

Text - p. 70 - citing psychologist Bourdon. "having written 126 pp. on sensation from an experiemntal point of view, he found it necessary to write, byway of conclusion, ofur pages and a half on the "Philosphy of Sensation". "invaluable" statements: "The emergence of sensation, as a consequence of stimulation, is unexplainable. If it is assumed that stimulation remains, as well as the stimulus itself, an essentially mechancial phenomenon, of the smae nature for all senses, it is impossible indeed, to understand how it can result in phenomena thoroughly different from each other and from movmemetn, viz., smells, pressures, sounds, colors, etc. such as we sense them." (B Bourdon, Nouveau Traite de Psychologie par Gergoes Dumas (paris: Alcan, 1932 vol. 2, 212). These are the words of an honest man.

(...) "still confronted by an exceptionally difficult problem of causlaity. Briefly: assuming that we have in mind not the mechanistic world-picutre of Descartes but one of Aristotelian type, to explaine "the emergence of seneation as a result of stimulatoin" remains an arduous task.

(...) A thtis point, progress in the statement of hte issue requires a comparison betw. sensation and abstract knowledge. common language and diverse philosophies testify to our beilef in the existence of entities whose primary funcion is not to be but to represent sometinge lese than tehmselves (....) names (...); notions, representaions, concepts, mental pictures, images, memeroeis, ideas, etc. (hmmmm)

p. 71 - Bertrand Russell "jerky life" (History of western philosophy)

trains no wheels except in stations (ftnt 20 ) At teh center of the dialogue, an ambiguity which, if properly mamaged, no longer causes confusion but effeictvely helps to manifest hte relation between ideas and things and leaves little appeal to most idealistic philosophies.

"double-sided character of memories, images, concepts, etc." (ftnt 21 Aristotle on memory and recollection, l. 450a25)

skimmed through rest