among the "common sensibles," there is a certain resemblance between
Aristotle’s doctrine and Kant’s theory that recognition of spatial and
temporal order is a function not of understanding but of "pure" sense.
It is further held that to be aware that one is perceiving
(self-consciousness) and to discriminate between the different classes
of "special" sense-perception must also be functions of the "common
sense-organ." Thus Aristotle makes the mistake of treating the most
fundamental acts of intelligent reflection as precisely on a par, from
the point of view of the theory of knowledge, with awareness of colour
or sound.
A more legitimate function assigned to the "common sensorium" in the
heart is that "fantasy," the formation of mental imagery, depends on its
activity. The simplest kind of "image," the pure memory-image left
behind after the object directly arousing perception has ceased to
stimulate, is due to the persistence of the movements set up in the
heart after the sensory process in the peripheral organ is over. Since
Aristotle denies the possibility of thinking without the aid of
memory-images, this function of the "common sensorium" is the
indispensable basis of mental recall, anticipation, and thought. Neither
"experience," _i.e._ a general conviction which results from the
frequent repetition of similar perceptions, nor thought can arise in any
animal in which sense-stimulation does not leave such "traces" behind
it. Similarly "free imagery," the existence of trains of imagination
not tied down to the reproduction of an actual order of sensations, is
accounted for by the consideration that "chance coincidence" may lead to
the stimulation of the heart in the same way in which it might have been
stimulated by actual sensation-processes. Sleeping and waking and the
experiences of dream-life are likewise due to changes in the functioning
of the "common sense-organ," brought about partly by fatigue in the
superficial sense-organs, partly by qualitative changes in the blood and
"animal spirits" caused by the processes of nutrition and digestion.
Probably Aristotle’s best scientific work in psychology is contained in
the series of small essays in which this theory of memory and its
imagery is worked out. (Aristotle’s language about the "common
sensibles" is, of course, the source of our expression "common sense,"
which, however, has an entirely different meaning. The shifting of
sense has apparently been effected through Cicero’s employment of the
phrase _sensus communis_ to mean tactful sympathy, the feeling of
fellowship with our kind on which the Stoic philosophers laid so much
stress.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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