With Anthony Crifasi

ANTHONY CRIFASI-5: Aristotle explicitly distinguishes nous from the faculty of imagination, so he obviously does not think that univesals are "imagined out of sensational elements and comparisons." So since he also rejects innate ideas, he obviously believes that there is a third alternative.

GARY C MOORE-5: What, then, is this strange 'third' alternative? If 'nous' is something SIGNIFICANTLY different from perception or even accounting by comparison, what can it possibly be?

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: A non-sensory encounter with things in their ti ên einai which is always true (On The Soul, 430b28).

GCM-6: "A non-sensory encounter"  Are you joking?!! How do you encounter 'non-sensorially? What is Aristotle's description of it? [430b28] 'The thinking of the definition in the sense of what is is for something to be is never in error nor is it the assertion of something concerning something.' Aristotle is simply starting thinking to get 'definition' non-analogically, non-referentially -- not AS something, but just seeing that it exists, pointing at it. 'This is this'. It is present perception pure and simple, not 'the assertion of something concerning something.' [CATEGORIES 7b35-8a11] 'The perceptible seems to be prior to perception. For the destruction of the perceptible carries perception to destruction, but perception does not carry the perceptible to destruction . . . Perception does not carry the perceptible . . . but the perceptible exists even before perception exists . . . Hence the perceptible would seem to be prior to perception.' Trans. J. L. Ackril, 1984.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: This is why I resist characterizing nous as an account by comparison, since that can be taken as something of our "making," and therefore fallible, which is what the empiricists meant when they denied our knowledge of essences and reduced them to mere "comparisons" or "associations" of ideas and perceptions on our part. I think you may be imposing Hume on your reading of Aristotle here.

GCM-6: I think 'characterizing nous as an account by comparison' is exactly what you are doing.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-5: If the produce of nous is merely a "fallible likeness," which may "work" or not "work" in practice, then how do you reconcile that with Aristotle's statement at 100b8 that nous is always true?

GARY C MOORE-5: [100b5-8] "Of the intellectual states by which we grasp truth, some are always true and some admit falsehood (e. g. opinion and calculation do--whereas understanding and comprehension are always true; and no kind apart from comprehension is more exact than understanding." ---- First, 'nous' as comprehension or intuition is being compared to reasoning or rather "opinion and calculation". ---- Second, what is seen in always true per se, there intuition or nous becomes an exact synonym to sight or perception or sensation. That comprehension as sight is the basis for and more fundamental than 'understanding' is seen at 100b8-9 "No kind apart from comprehension is more exact than understanding" -- and -- [100b14-16] "If we have no other true kind apart from understanding, comprehension will be the principle of understanding." "Understanding" here will serve as the comparison of 'always true' perception for likeness as the "primitive universal", and therefore ONCE AGAIN all that is sufficient and necessary is perception and likeness.

ANTHONY-6: I'm not sure what your last sentence means: "Understanding here will SERVE as the comparison of 'always true' perception for likeness as the primitive universal." Are you saying that episteme is the comparison of nous, in addition to your previous characterization of nous as the comparison of aisthesis?

GCM-6: That works fine. You would be climbing a logical ladder from 'perceptible' to 'perception' to ordinary generalization. 'Understanding', Barnes says, 'uses 'know' in an unqualified way; it expresses an ordinary knowledge claim.'

ARISTOTLE HIMSELF: "Given that perception is present in them, in some animals the percepts are retained and in others they are not. If they are not, then the animal has no knowledge when it is not perceiving (either in general or with regard for items which are not retained). But some can still hold the percepts after perceiving them. When this occurs often, there is then a further difference: some animals come to have an account based on the retention of these items, and others do not."

GARY C MOORE-5a: This explicitly supports what I said above about perception and likeness. Perception IS KNOWLEDGE as long as the animal perceives it. "When this occurs often 'THEN' some animals come to have an account of these items, and others do not." That only makes sense if an 'accounting' compares nous or comprehension or perceptions or sensations in order to come up with an 'account'.

Anthony Crifasi-6: Aristotle says that nous is not the principle of just any kind of "knowledge," but specifically of episteme (100b16), which you translate as "understanding". So, although the accounting to which you refer above, does come after the general kind of "knowledge" that includes aisthesis and memory, it doesn't follow that it comes after episteme or nous.

GCM-6: Then 'nous' is simply generalization simpliciter.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-5bIn fact, he even says that some animals have memory while others do not (99b37), and memory is a necessary condition for nous. In neither of those lines does he say that this "seems" to be the case.

GARY C MOORE-5b: In saying 'seems' I was trying to be reasonable. But obviously you believe Aristotle, and therefore you yourself, can somehow literally get inside the minds of animals to be so certain of this. Would you explain to me how you do this? It would be very interesting.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: I don't believe Aristotle. I am merely arguing that it is indeed Aristotle's position that not all animals have memory (99b37), and therefore that more animals have aisthesis than have nous. Consequently, for Aristotle, not every differentiation of sensations is nous.

GCM-6: I find that agreeable . . . or I am tired. But surely you are not saying Aristotle gives precedence to inference over the literally perceptible? That you can 'see' inside things you really cannot see? And THEREFORE say 'more animals have aesthesis than have nous'?

"Likeness" is sufficient for the meaning of "universality". You don't need anything more. "likeness" is the simplest term covering the result of the whole process according to Ockham's razor. The use of "universal" as something more or other than simple "likeness" either needs much more explanation to justify it, as well as calling intuition "nous" as if something more than simple perception and comparison were implied, or it is a mystical apparition. I do not think Aristotle really implied a "more" than experience and its interpretation through comparison.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-5: He must have implied that, since he says that more animals have aisthesis (and therefore the ability to differentiate sensations) than have nous. In other words, for Aristotle, there is a difference between an ACCIDENTAL likeness (such as a similar color or shape) and a sameness in ESSENCE (such as two people as people). A perception of the former does not necessarily imply a recognition of the latter.

GARY C MOORE: Then any two people (why 'two'?) MUST be EXACTLY alike ---- that is, as you say 'a sameness in ESSENCE' THAT IS NOT ACCIDENTAL and therefore NOT subject to ANY KIND of accident --- EXACTLY alike because they share this mysterious 'ESSENCE' whereas two bright deep reds can NEVER be exactly alike because they are only likenesses and share no mystical, undefined, unexplained ESSENCE completely different from likeness, correct?

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: If two (or more) things are the same in essence (ti ên einai), why does that exclude diversity in accidents among them, so that they would not have to be exactly alike except in essence?

GCM-6: Then you are saying 'red' has no essence, right? Why?

ANTHONY CRIFASI-4: According to Aristotle, there doesn't have to be a universal at all for there to be sensation and memory, since he says that more animals have sensation and memory than have nous.

GARY C MOORE-4: What possible use, then, would there be for memory if there was no comparison?

ANTHONY-5: I agree, but there is a difference between a comparison of things through their accidents and a comparison of things through their essence. The former does not necessarily imply the latter.

GARY C MOORE-5: If we are not being merely and fuzzily metaphorical here, then an 'essence' cannot in any way be accidental. To be accidental means something is subject to change. If essence is not subject to change it is changeless.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: Aristotle says that change occurs not only with respect to accidents, but also with respect to substance, and essence is said primarily of substance

(Met. 1030a30).

GCM-6: I have no disagreement with that. But then an essence could never be a universal as necessarily always the case [73b28-29].

This sounds like you are talking absolutely, considering no being situated within or relative to any comprehending, more inclusive situation, i. e., it is changeless relative to 'place' as the identifying boundary of change [212a20] or to the relatively changeless 'now' which is carried by motion which is measured. [219b22-33] If that is the case, then the 'essence' is quite literally immortal, eternal, etc. Is it any different from a divinity? Because, as far as I can 'see', 'place' and 'now' still only apply to human being as perceiver and accountant. Human being is normally considered mortal. BUT since neither one's own 'birth' or 'death' can either be perceived at all or accounted for in any way, what does that mean? That I am immortal in reality? That I am an eternal ESSENCE? That is, my ESSENCE is without ACCIDENTS? But is that situation itself merely an ACCIDENT? The viewer cannot view himself? The knower cannot know that he learns? Any objections to my being a male chauvinistic pig? When we slaughter an accidental pig, do we destroy its eternal essence?

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: Aristotle's disagreement with Plato was precisely over whether the essences of things are separate in their own right (Met. 1031a15-1032a12). Aristotle obviously held that they were not distinct from things.

GCM-6: But 'things' known in what mode? As aesthesis? Or Nous? Or epistome? As epistome IS different from aesthesis pure and simple, then a thing simply and purely seen is different from the abstract thought about it.

I can reasonably conceive a greater or lesser ability of comparison as well as a greater and lesser ability of memory

- of which Aristotle says some animals have none - but I find the later is nonsense, and the having of memory but not the ability at any level whatsoever to compare experience remembered, even if Aristotle or anyone else said it, nonsense. Even for a planarian, this would very quickly lead to extinction. But it has been experimentally demonstrated that a planarian can learn to avoid painful experiences. Therefore a planarian MUST have memory and it MUST use that memory to compare experiences.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-5: I agree, but I don't think Aristotle does. As you point out, he very clearly says that some animals do not have memory, in which case they would not be able to learn.

GARY C MOORE-5: If a planarian can learn (a turbellarian worm of the family Planariidae; a turbellarian of the order Tricladida), then anything can learn and have memory whether observed or not. Zoological observation can only tell us things purely about objective behavior which essentially has to be positive statements, such and such an animal seems to behave like a self-conscious individual, such and such an animal seems to grieve for its dead which, if one really tears it down to its fundamentals is saying we can only understand animals -- even planarians -- by comparing them -- positively -- to human being which we so arrogantly claim to so superficially understand. When we make NEGATIVE statements about behavior no objective physical inability can disqualify -- any many times this is wrong because we fail to observe an animal can use other parts of the body for purposes we do not automatically relate, for instance, a handless planarian can still manage to 'grasp' -- we merely say, What we have seen SO FAR indicates it cannot do such and such but that at any moment it might well do so because nothing objective prevents it. After all, in the 19th century, it was scientifically observed negros do not behave like human beings and therefore must be another species than homo sapiens. If a planarian has memory, anything has memory potentially. And if it has memory, it has the ability to compare, account, and make likenesses potentially.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: Again, we don't disagree with regard to what you say here, but we both disagree with Aristotle, since he explicitly says that some animals which have aisthesis do not have memory. So whether or not he is wrong about that, the fact remains that for him, some animals do not have nous and yet can compare their sensations.

GCM-6: Yet a real scientist can not come to that conclusion because a negative of essence cannot be demonstrated, only a negative of contradictory definition or it is not the case right at this moment but the situation has the possibility to change. Not having nous cannot be demonstrated because it may simply be a capacity not used yet, and this has, indeed, happened as has been demonstrated with chimpanzees and gorillas. They do not WANT to communicate through symbols all on their own, but, if bribed, they can. In the wild no one bribes them. In a zoo, they can be. However, I think YOU already agree with this. I think concepts such as 'nous' simply ought to be thrown out or rendered harmless because Aristotle himself actually leaves such a concept obscure or so many people would not disagree FIRMLY AND PERSISTENTLY over its meaning. Aristotle himself has unscientific attitudes toward animals and towards whatever he really means by nous, and therefore can no longer serve as a consistent philosopher to follow, but he does sharpen considerably the understanding of other thinkers such as Hume and Heidegger. He makes you nail down otherwise imperceptible difficulties I would not pay attention to. However, one must be able to turn around on Aristotle and say, 'Is such a concept as 'nous' really viable in modern thinking? No matter how you go about it, you have to translate it into other terms or drop it altogether. It is definitive Aristotle does not understand science as we do. However, he did understand many things for the first time without all the presuppositions that grew upon them in the next two thousand years.

If it does not have a linguistically adapted human-like tongue, it can learn to communicate equally well using other methods. Nothing objectively prevents it. THEREFORE the only real zoological question is why all these animals who MUST LOGICALLY and potentially have these abilities, why do they not learn how to communicate on a human abstract level? PART of this MAY, OR MAY NOT, have to do with what the 'hand' means, and also having RIGHT and LEFT comparable AND REVERSED SHAPED hands as Heidegger has noted, for instance, in WHAT IS CALLED THINKING?

I also think, if we could have presented this argument to Aristotle, he would have agreed because he could not possibly believed in an absolutist human viewpoint.

ANTHONY CRIFASI-6: Aristotle was quite the absolutist when it came to many scientific matters. But as for whether he would have accepted that all animals have memory, maybe he would have, but that still doesn't change his distinction between the *objects* of aisthesis and nous respectively. Aisthesis is not of essences, and nous is not of accidents.

GCM-6: Considering my statement above, 'no contest'. Actually, as therein stated, I have no problem at all. But ALL THINGS are mortal.

Gary C Moore

Michael Pennamacoor wrote:

Hi Gary and Anthony, just butting in as usual

GCM: BUTT! BUTT!

MICHAEL P: A "non-sensory encounter with things" is perhaps the very possibility of a 'sensory encounter with things' in order that such things are encountered as such things (logos, the pointing that collects the appearances as the appearances of {some thing}).

GCM: As 'possibility' or 'capacity' considering I am going to necessarily position it in my material body, I have no only no problem but agree with whole-heartedly.

MICHAEL P: Heidegger somewhere states that can be rendered [as] 'taking-to-heart'; if we could think as appearance as such, the appearing of what appears, then the relation between and can become one of an intimacy, a bridging that bears up the business of what we now call 'perception'.

GCM: Please specifically find the reference if you do not mind. After all, being 'familiar' is a key but ambiguous term in this specific text we are studying.

MICHAEL P: Surely an assertion ('this is this'; 'this is', however silent, is co=present with any "pure and simple" percepotion, in order for the "this" to be (seen, heard, felt, as) this this? There must be (surely) an assertion
(however silent etc) that whatever is perceived is at all rather than not, that some thing (perceived) is, accompanying the silent perception, the face-to-face?

GCM: I am glad you brought this up. My primary concern in this is to emphasize the most important piece of knowledge in all this is 'that whatever is perceived is at all rather than not', that it must be SEEN, PERIOD, not only first of all but necessarily retained in some fashion, and there we have problems, to certify all statements. That all statements, propositions, sylogisms are purely secondary and most of the time unecessary, and become meaningless without the validating sensory experience. I consider it a failure of modern science that, knowing how much the observer interferes with the observation, that this is not taken seriously at all levels of science. I am sure an example could be found abundantly in all sciences, but one tragic instance is the zoological and biological failure to follow up on original observations to see if their presuppositions are in fact as valid as their textbooks say they are. Much of animal experimentation for many years and still proceeds on the absurd presupposition that A) animals cannot feel (Yes, this can be found in college textbooks and was taught by college professors), and B) animals are not self-aware. However, students, for whom the professor's primary presupposition is that they are profoundly stupid and must rigidly follow the guidelines he has set down, have observed abundant behavior of animals in the wild that either indicates they are individuals in their choices of action, and therefore possibly self-aware, or they are broken and numerous genuses and species need to be exterminated as being mentally off-balance. And they probably would if they could. It is absolutely amazing how many scientists whose science is of animals seem to hate and dispise animals. The same abundantly applies, from my personal experience, to those who study the human body. No wonder the human race is so profoundly messed up. Hopefully, they are all dinosaurs and are dying out.


Anthony Crifasi

I agree - my problem is not with what you say, but rather with projecting this onto Aristotle (which I'm not accusing you of). The rejection of the scholastic notion of "simple apprehension" prior to any assertion of this AS this (A is B), based on Aristotle's explicit statement that nous is not always such an assertion:

"An assertion, like an affirmation, is of something about something else, and in every case it is true or false. But the intellect is not in every case [true or false]. If it is of whatness with respect to essence, it is [always] true, and it is not something about something else" (On The Soul
430b27)

And in the next line, he specifically compares the relationship between intellect as assertion and intellect as non-assertion, with the relationship between sensation of a proper sensible (eg. color) and sensation of the thing that is colored:

"just as seeing a proper [sensible] is [always] true, whereas that the white thing seen is a man (or is not a man) is not always true"

So clearly Aristotle himself holds that there is a nous which is not assertive of something AS something, just as sensation can either be taken as of (eg.) color simply, or of the thing colored.

It's a specifically modern phenomenological idea that sensation itself is already essentially judgmental and not simple. This began with Kant's proposal that sensation is already the result of an a priori synthesis, as well as Hegel's analysis of the sensory "here" and "now" as already presupposing universality. I'm not saying that the latter is philosophically avoidable; I'm merely saying it was not Aristotle's position.

Anthony Crifasi