Tag Archives: De Anima

Is Flesh an Organ or Medium? “Touch Experiments” in Aristotle

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Aristotle takes a curious position on whether the sense of touch involves a medium.  It seems easier, simpler, and more intuitive to believe that there is no medium, and that the sense of touch works by having the sense object affect the flesh directly.  However, Aristotle imagines several thought experiments, which serve as arguments to bolster his position, all of which are clever, but which have been found wanting by some commentators. (1)  These arguments are laid out in De Anima II.11, the chapter which particularly explores and describes the sense of touch. 

The first of these arguments is the “Membrane Argument.”  We are told by Aristotle to imagine a membrane, stretched as an extremely thin layer around our body, or perhaps limited, for clarity, to only around a hand.  In such a situation, the membrane, “would communicate the sensation in the same way, immediately when touched”  (trans. Shields, 423a3-4).  We would not, Aristotle insists, think that the membrane was an organ, even though there was an immediate transmission of the perception.  So, just as an immediate communication does not suffice to make an organ out of a membrane, so too immediate communication of the perception in the case of the flesh does not make it an organ either. 

There is a modification of this argument, acknowledging the possible objection that the membrane example is rigged in favor of Aristotle’s conclusion: a membrane is not living, and so this example is doomed to failure from the outset, because all organs are necessarily living.  Coming immediately on the heels of the membrane argument, then, Aristotle offers up the “Natural Membrane Argument.”  The idea here is to imagine, however this would come about, that the membrane from the first example is now “naturally attached” (symphues) to the skin, rather than an artificial add-on.  Aristotle says that in this scenario, “the perception would pass through it still more quickly” (Trans. Shields, 423a5).  It is unclear how perception would occur more quickly than the instantaneity implied in the case of the mere membrane, but that it occurs, seems for Aristotle to result from the idea that some things, namely naturally affixed ones, are better media than others. 

Continuing on with this same line of thought, Aristotle next fleshes out his naturally attached argument by inventively offering air as that thing to which we become naturally affixed.  Supposing that were air to become naturally affixed to us, we would then think that sound, smell and sight were brought about by one thing, namely the air as our single organ (since they, of course, operate via air).  We would nevertheless be mistaken, as the organs would properly be the ears, eyes and nose.  So just as in the hypothetical case of air becoming naturally affixed to us, with air as a medium which appears to us as an organ, so too in reality in the case of flesh, where flesh is actually a medium but also falsely appears to us as an organ.  One important feature to pick up on here is that it is not the relative proximity of the object of perception that determines whether a medium is mistaken for an organ, but it is rather how indistinguishable the medium is from the sense faculty itself, in other words, how closely aligned the medium and faculty are.  This may in fact be only hard to distinguish because of our point of view, in that the sense of touch is in some way internal to flesh, and thus difficult to experientially separate from the medium of flesh.  In the same way that in the example of air becoming naturally fused to our flesh we would have difficulty in determining whether, for example, the air was the medium or the organ of hearing (when it fact the ear was the organ all along,) so it is the case now when we are with great difficulty trying to determine the difference between the medium and organ when it comes to flesh in the case of touch. 

REFERENCES:

(1) In fact many consider these arguments poor.  But I do think, along with Polansky, that these arguments were attempting to make room for “the possibility for the flesh to be medium rather than sense organ”  (Polanksy 2007: 325)

Aristotle, and Christopher Shields. Aristotle De Anima. Trans. Christopher Shields. Oxford Univ Press, 2016.

Polansky, Ronald. 2007. Aristotle’s De anima. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Dynamics of Thought: “The Soul is All Things”

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(This post assumes that thought or perception is self-cognizant, that is, that to have a perception or thought is to be aware of it, as a function of the perception or thought itself, and that awareness does not owe to some capacity over and above perception or thought itself.  See this post for Aristotle’s position.)

As an addendum to the idea that awareness is concomitant with all thought insofar as as it is thought, it is important to discuss the overall flexibility of the soul as a capacity par excellence. In contrast to some readings of the Platonic account which has all knowledge somehow latent within us in Recollection, the Aristotelian account maintains that thought is something entirely plastic and receptive to its objects. This is the case to such a degree that Aristotle can make the seemingly shocking statement that, “Let us now summarize our results about soul, and repeat that the soul is in a way all existing things” (De Anima 431b21, trans. Smith). This may in fact be the explanation for why Aristotle does not need to appeal to some feature over and above the mere presence of a thought to account for an awareness of that thought. For if the soul were not an all-accommodating capacity, a potentiality, then this would mean it would have only a capacity determinate for certain thoughts; it could only have an awareness of those objects for which it was a determinate capacity. This would entail that if the soul were to meet anything outside the confines of its proscribed capacity, it would not be aware of them.  Yet this is absurd; anything we think of, we are aware of. Therefore, if we want to preserve the feature of psychology that thought brings with it an awareness of itself, we would do well by also maintaining, with Aristotle, that the “soul is all things.”

Angry Soul, Angry Body in Aristotle

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And it seems also that all the affections of the soul accompany the body: anger, gentleness, fear, pity, courage, and even more, joy and both loving and hating.  For the body is somewhat affected with the emotions.  On occasion, although there are strong and clear disturbances, it is evident that there is no irritation or fearing [from the body]; yet sometimes there is physical movement [of the body] at the instigation of small and trivial things, whenever the body is excited and in this same way whenever the body grows angry.  And yet this example is more clear:  [sometimes] although nothing fearful occurs among the emotions, there are fearful things coming into existence in the emotions of one when he is frightened.  And if this is so, it is clear that the emotions are formulae implicated in matter.[1]  (De Anima 403a16-25)

Among the vexations of the De Anima that scholars either discover or invent, rediscover from past commentators, or– at the mercy of their own textual uncharitableness – are blithely inserted, those among the first book are the most frequently ignored.  In part, of course, this is due to the function of the first book as mainly “setting the table,” asking the questions that need to be asked and in the process determining a method to be followed, as well as laying out prior (and faulty) views about the soul.  There is less substantive (or should it be incorporeal?) material for discussing and analyzing.

But there are a number of fascinating discursions in the first book.  One of these is a small discussion about whether the emotions or affections (πάθη pathe) can be separated from the body.  The “proof”, if one can refer to the experience Aristotle provides as evidence for such, is offered by some philosophically ambiguous conditions that point to the association of the bodily with the emotional.  As is not unusual with Aristotle, he does not elaborate his theory to the reader’s satisfaction, yet uncharacteristically he gives no examples for the situations he describes.

I would like to offer a few examples on Aristotle’s behalf.  Perhaps they are poorly exampled, but in an effort to understand what he is saying, unfortunately we must fill in his formula to see if his assessment is right.

If I were to paraphrase him, I would say this:  Sometimes when there are clear and present dangers there is no reaction, no provocation or shrinking on our part.  Think of a tightrope walker who does not flinch as he carefully crosses a rope strung hundreds of feet in the air.  He does not experience the emotion of fear, and thus his body does not produce the symptoms of fear.  If the emotions were not so closely allied with the body however, we might expect the body to start sweating profusely as it sensed (through the eyes) the great height from which it could fall.  But it does not do so.  On the other hand there are times when there are small and silly trifles which really cause a stir in us.  For example, sometimes the sound of a phone going off, a circumstance familiar enough, can cause anger in us if it is in an inappropriate setting, such as at a theatre.  But it is not the sound itself that causes the anger to manifest in the body, rather it is the soul which is angry in some sense, and in turn the soul causes the physical symptoms of anger in the body.  These two examples show that the body follows the lead of the soul in that when the physical manifestations of anger occur, it is because of the soul, not because of a physiological reaction.  But if you are not yet convinced, I have got a better example.  Sometimes the soul can produce the physical symptoms of fear by itself when they are no frightening things in sight.  A man can fear that he might meet a mugger on the street, or fear while dreaming, but despite the object of his fear being absent or non-existent, his soul can nevertheless produce the physical symptoms of fear within his body.  Thus when the emotions fear, the body fears also.  When there is anger qua emotion, there is anger qua body.

There is a great subtlety of reasoning here on Aristotle’s part, but I think his argument is inconclusive.  His effort shows that when the physical products of feeling manifest, there was a logically antecedent feeling in the soul beforehand.  But does this mean that if there is the feeling of anger, for example, there must also be some physical manifestation of that feeling, be it ever so small?  I would gravitate toward yes, but perhaps for a given emotion, there is a counterexample.  Take courage (θάρσος tharsos) which Aristotle gives as an example in this very passage.  If there is not an actual battle or appropriate circumstance for someone to partake in (i.e. evidence his courage through action) could it be said that this person is feeling courageous?  I would say yes, but on Aristotle’s view, this does not seem possible.

[1] ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς πάθη πάντα εἶναι μετὰ σώματος, θυμός, πραότης, φόβος, ἔλεος, θάρσος, ἔτι χαρὰ καὶ τὸ φιλεῖν τε καὶ μισεῖν· ἅμα γὰρ τούτοις πάσχει τι τὸ σῶμα. μηνύει δὲ τὸ ποτὲ μὲν ἰσχυρῶν καὶ ἐναργῶν παθημάτων συμβαινόντων μηδὲν παροξύνεσθαι ἢ φοβεῖσθαι, ἐνίοτε δ’ ὑπὸ μικρῶν καὶ ἀμαυρῶν κινεῖσθαι, ὅταν ὀργᾷ τὸ σῶμα καὶ οὕτως ἔχῃ ὥσπερ ὅταν ὀργίζηται. ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον τοῦτο φανερόν· μηθενὸς γὰρ φοβεροῦ συμβαίνοντος ἐν τοῖς πάθεσι γίνονται τοῖς τοῦ φοβουμένου. εἰ δ’ οὕτως ἔχει, δῆλον ὅτι τὰ πάθη λόγοι ἔνυλοί εἰσιν.