Aristotelian Theory of Sense Percepcion: Conflict of Interpretations

Abstract

According to Aristotle, sense perception is the ability of a living being to be affected and changed by some external object. When the sense-faculty is acted upon it becomes like the perceptible object and receives its form without matter. There are two ways of interpreting Aristotle’s theory of sense-perception. According to the ‘physical’ or ‘literal’ one (R. Sorabji, S. Everson, M. Nussbaum and H. Putnam), perception is a mental process realized by some material change in the body, so that eye’s becoming aware of red requires its going red etc. The proponents of the ‘intentional’ interpretation (M. Burnyeat, T. Johanson) argue that in perception sense-organ changes insofar as it becomes aware of a sense-object of which it was previously unaware. So sense-perception is a pure mental or ‘intentional’ change. Yet we believe that neither of these approaches is correct. We offer another explanation of Aristotle’s theory of perception. In our opinion it is necessary to separate the material change in the sense-organ from the formal one, so that perception can be considered as that type of incomplete change that Aristotle calls κίνησις and simultaneously as an actualization of some potentiality or ἐντελέχεια.