Aristotle on Perceptual Self-Consciousness

1

The topic of this paper is Aristotle’s famous, obscure, and controversial account of a phenomenon that he calls “perceiving that we perceive.” In one way or another, what Aristotle offers is an account of our awareness of our own seeing, hearing, etc.: what I will call perceptual self-consciousness.

Instead of turning straight to Aristotle’s De anima, I would like to start by recalling a familiar moment from Descartes’ Second Meditation. Descartes has just introduced his cogito and established with certainty that he is “a thing that thinks”: that is, “a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sense-perceptions” (A. T. VII 28). At this point in the Meditations, the final item on this list is surprising. Descartes still doubts the existence of his own body and of a world outside his mind. How can he be certain that he has sense-perceptions? Perception, we might think, is a relation to what is “out there,” apparent to us through our sense-organs. Descartes anticipates this objection. Instead of removing sense-perception from the scope of his cogito, he redefines it:

I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat. But I am asleep, so all this is false. Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called sense-perceiving (sentire) is strictly just this; and in this restricted sense it is none other than thinking (cogitare). (A. T. VII 29, trans. Cottingham, modified)

For Descartes, seeing and hearing are strictly speaking a matter of seeming to see and seeming to hear. As such, they are modes of “thought” (cogitatio), or of “that which is in us in such a way that we are immediately aware of it” (A. T. VII 160). Understood this way, our awareness of our seeing and hearing does not involve an awareness of anything “out there.” It is an awareness of what is going on “in here,” in our minds.

I have opened with these reminders about Descartes because the dominant recent approach to Aristotle’s account of perceiving that we perceive strikes me as broadly Cartesian. It takes Aristotle to be concerned, like Descartes, with the knowledge of one’s own mind or mental states. According to Thomas Johansen, Aristotle thinks that an “inner sense” perceives our “mental states.” Indeed, he takes Aristotle to have anticipated Locke’s conception of consciousness as “the perception of what passes in a Man’s own mind.”^[1] According to Victor Caston, Aristotle thinks that our mental states possess a subjective, “felt quality” that renders them the objects of a reflexive awareness.^[2] And according to Aryeh Kosman, Aristotle thinks that the “mind” or “consciousness” becomes its own object in the act of perception, and thereby perceives itself.^[3] These three interpretations have set the terms of the contemporary debate over Aristotle’s account of perceiving that we perceive. The differences between them are profound and far-reaching, but there is one fundamental point on which they agree: that Aristotle’s topic is, broadly speaking, the mind or soul’s consciousness of itself and its own activity.^[4]

I would like to push back against this point of basic agreement. As I read Aristotle, he means to account for our awareness of our own seeing and hearing in such a way that these words retain their normal, innocent, non-Cartesian meaning. To perceive that we see, or so I will argue, is to perceive, by using our eyes, that something, an external object, is (in fact) apparent to us. On the picture that will emerge, Aristotle’s account of perceptual self-consciousness is not addressed to questions about how we know our occurrent mental states. Instead, it makes direct contact with Socratic concerns about whether we can know what we know and do not know, and also with Hellenistic epistemology, where the central philosophical problem is, in effect, whether we are ever in a position to answer the question “How do you know?” with “Because I see it.”^[5]

2

Let us begin by considering Aristotle’s account of perceiving that we perceive in De anima. It is brief enough to reproduce in full:

[1] Since we perceive that we see and hear, one must perceive that he sees either by sight (ὄψει) or by some other [sense]. [2] But the same [sense] will be of sight and of the underlying color, so that either two senses will be of the same thing, or one will be of itself. [3] Furthermore, if the sense which is of sight were other than sight, then either they will go on to infinity or there will be some sense that is of itself; so that one should grant this about the first. [4] But this involves a difficulty (ἔχει δ᾽ ἀπορίαν). For if to perceive by sight is to see, and what is seen is color or what has color, then if someone is to see what sees (τὸ ὁρῶν), what sees first must have color. [5] It is clear, then, that perceiving by sight is not one thing; for even when we do not see, we discern (κρίνομεν) both darkness and light by sight, though not in the same way. [6] Furthermore, what sees is in a way colored (ὡς κεχρωμάτισται). For each sense-organ (αἰσθητήριον) receives the perceptible object without its matter. That is why even when the perceptible objects are gone, the perceptions and appearances remain in the sense-organs. (De an. 3.2, 425b12–25)

Nearly every word in this passage is controversial, but the basic structure of Aristotle’s argument is relatively clear. He asks whether we perceive that we see “by sight” (ὄψει) or by some other sense [1].^[6] Two considerations decide in favor of the former, and he concludes that sight is “of itself” [2 and 3].^[7] He finds this puzzling: if we are to see “what sees” (τὸ ὁρῶν), what sees must be colored [4]. He solves the problem by pointing out, first, that “perceiving by sight is not one thing” [5], and then by suggesting that there is a sense in which “what sees” is colored: when we see something, the organ of sight “receives” its color [6].

I have said that the most influential recent interpretations of this passage take Aristotle to be interested in our awareness of our own mental states. But if we take Aristotle’s remarks at face value, the relatively plain presupposition of the argument is that we perceive that we see by perceiving our own eyes. Consider the basic progression of Aristotle’s argument. When he concludes that “sight” is “of itself,” he worries immediately that unless “what sees” is colored we will not be able to “see” it. He solves the problem by suggesting that “what sees is, in a way, colored.” By way of an explanation, he reminds us that our sense-organs receive perceptible forms (colors, sounds, etc.) from external objects, and that these perceptible forms exist in our sense-organs as “perceptions and appearances.” The most straightforward and literal interpretation of these claims is: (i) that the organ of sight becomes visible when it receives color from colored objects; (ii) that because it is visible, we are able to “see what sees”; and (iii) that this enables us to perceive that we see. In short, Aristotle seems to think that we are able to perceive that we see because we are able to see our eyes receive color.

Until recently, this was the standard interpretation of Aristotle’s argument.^[8] But nobody considered it a very appealing theory of perceptual self-consciousness. It suggests that Aristotle holds a remarkably crude view according to which we perceive that we see by seeing little images in our eyes. Though some recent scholars have attributed this view to Aristotle,^[9] the dominant tendency over the past few decades has been to find a more philosophically appealing theory of self-consciousness by reading a reference to the eyes out of the text.

Kosman’s seminal article led the way. He grants that there is a sense in which the eye sees itself, but argues that for Aristotle, color’s presence in the eye (“seeing”) is really just its presence in “consciousness”; that consciousness is nothing but its object; and that it is therefore always, in a sense, a consciousness of consciousness: a seeing of seeing.^[10] Caston takes a different tack. He argues that Aristotle’s Greek has been misunderstood: to perceive τὸ ὁρῶν is not to perceive “what sees,” but our very “seeing.”^[11] Our seeing, a “mental state,” becomes “colored” insofar as it characterized by “qualia” that give it a subjective, felt quality. When we see a blue sky, we perceive these qualia and thereby perceive “what it is like” to see the sky. This, for Caston, is perceiving that we see.^[12] Johansen offers still another interpretation of Aristotle’s “what sees,” according to which it refers neither to the eye nor to the act of seeing, but rather to “the faculty of sight qua seeing,” that is, an aspect of the soul.^[13] We perceive that we see when an “inner sense” registers the colors somehow present in our souls. These otherwise divergent interpretations agree that we do not perceive that we see by perceiving our eyes, but by perceiving, in one way or another, our own souls, minds, or mental states.

As evidence for an alternative along these lines, we might point to Aristotle’s claim that “sight” is “of itself.” It is natural to think that “sight” names an aspect of the soul, and to conclude on this basis that our ability to perceive that we see must be a function of the soul’s quasi-perceptual relation to itself. However, a closer consideration of the text suggests otherwise. When Aristotle concludes in [3] that “sight” is “of itself,” he infers immediately that we “see what sees,” which he seems to identify in [6] as the organ of sight. If we perceive that we see by seeing what sees, namely, the organ of sight; and if we do so “by sight,” which is “of itself”; then it is the organ of sight that is somehow “of itself.” In short, “sight” (ὄψις) seems to refer here to the organ of sight. When Aristotle says that “sight” is “of itself,” he means that the organ of sight has itself for an object.

Can terms like “sight” (ὄψις) and “hearing” (ἀκοή) refer to the organs of sight and hearing? A few relevant passages from the Parva naturalia show unambiguously that they can.^[14] In De somno, Aristotle says that it is not “by sight” (ὄψει) that we “see that we see,” nor “by sight” nor “taste” nor “both” that we discern (κρίνειν) that what is sweet differs from what is white (οὔτε γεύσει οὔτε ὄψει οὔτε ἀμφοῖν), but rather “by some common part of all the sense-organs” (τινι κοινῷ μορίῳ τῶν αἰσθητηρίων ἁπάντων). This final reference to the sense-organs suggests that Aristotle has been speaking of them all along, so that “sight” (ὄψις) and “taste” (γεῦσις) name the organs of sight and taste.^[15] A closely related passage from De insomniis confirms this interpretation. Aristotle says that when certain motions “from sight” (ἀπὸ τῆς ὄψεως, 461a28), “from hearing” (ἀπὸ τῆς ἀκοῆς, a29), “and from the other sense-organs” (καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄλλων αἰσθητηρίων, a30) reach the “principle” of perception, “one seems to oneself to see and hear and perceive” (a30–b1).^[16] Here in De insomniis, where Aristotle draws upon De somno’s account of perceiving that we see, “sight” (ὄψις) and “hearing” (ἀκοή) refer unambiguously to the eyes and ears. It is therefore no surprise that Aristotle slides so quickly in De anima from the conclusion that “sight” is “of itself” to the claim that we “see what sees.” For Aristotle, the site of reflexivity in De anima is not the mind or soul, but rather, in some sense, the eye.

3

If we assume that a theory of perceptual self-consciousness must explain our awareness of our own minds, souls, or mental states, we will want to resist the suggestion that for Aristotle, visual self-consciousness involves seeing our eyes. But the idea is somewhat less strange if Aristotle means to explain how we are aware that we are actually seeing something: that is, confronted with it through our eyes. This is especially true when we step back and consider certain general features of Aristotle’s theory of perception.

As we have seen, Aristotle thinks that the perceptible qualities that we perceive are received in some way by our sense-organs.^[17] He frequently characterizes these perceptible qualities as “affections” (πάθη) of our sense-organs or “motions” (κινήσεις) within them (cf. Sens. 446b21–26, Insomn. 461a30–31), so that when we perceive these perceptible qualities, we are perceiving the affections of our sense-organs. This idea is thematic in a well-known passage from the Physics:

We say that a thing is altered by being heated or sweetened or thickened or dried or whitened; and we make these assertions alike of what is inanimate and of what is animate, and further, where animate things are in question, we make them both of the parts that have no power of sense-perception and of the senses themselves (τά τε μὴ αἰσθητικὰ τῶν μερῶν καὶ αὐτὰς τὰς αἰσθήσεως). For in a way even the senses undergo alteration, since actual perception is a motion through the body, the sense being affected in a certain way (πασχούσης τι τῆς αἰσθήσεως). Thus the animate is capable of every kind of alteration of which the inanimate is capable; but the inanimate is not capable of every kind of alteration of which the animate is capable, since it is not capable of alteration in respect of the senses (κατὰ τὰς αἰσθήσεις): and the inanimate is unconscious of being affected (τὸ μὲν λανθάνει), whereas the animate is conscious of it (τὸ δ᾽ οὐ λανθάνει πάσχον), though there is nothing to prevent the animate also being unconscious of it when the alteration does not concern the senses. (Phys. 7.2, 244b7–45a2, trans. Hardie and Gaye, modified.)

Aristotle says here that both the animate and the inanimate (meaning, as often, the sentient and the non-sentient) can be altered in respect of their perceptible qualities. For example, both a mirror and an eye can be whitened, or receive the whiteness of a white object (cf. Meteor. 342b11–13).^[18] They differ in that inanimate things are unconscious of being affected (τὸ μὲν λανθάνει), whereas animate beings are conscious of it (τὸ δ᾽ οὐ λανθάνει πάσχον, Phys. 7.2, 244b15–45a1). That is, only animate beings are conscious of their bodily affections. For this reason, they are capable of perception.^[19] Aristotle is following Plato, who frequently describes perception as the consciousness of a bodily affection. In the Theaetetus, for example, we “[perceive] as many affections as reach through the body to the soul” (ὅσα διὰ τοῦ σώματος παθήματα ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν τείνει, 186C). In the Philebus, bodily affections (τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα παθημάτων) that reach the soul do not escape us (μὴ λανθάνειν, 33D).^[20] For both philosophers, there is a sense, at least, in which perception is the consciousness of a bodily affection. For Aristotle, it is a consciousness of the “whitening” or “sweetening” of our sense-organs. Now, if “seeing” refers to the eye’s reception of color (its whitening, reddening, etc.), it makes perfect sense to think that we perceive that we see by seeing our eyes – especially when we remember the general thrust of Aristotle’s argument in De anima 3.2, which is that we perceive that we see by perceiving the organ of sight become in some way “colored” (κεχρωμάτισται).

If this is right, the “see” in “perceiving that we see” refers specifically to the whitening or reddening of our eyes and not, as such, to an act of perception. After all, the Physics characterizes perception as a consciousness of the whitening or sweetening of our sense-organs, where these bodily affections are not perceptions in their own right.^[21] Fortunately, Aristotle’s accounts of perceiving that we see in both De anima and De somno give us good reason to take ‘seeing’ (‘hearing,’ etc.) in this narrow sense. In De anima, Aristotle distinguishes “perceiving by sight” (τὸ τῇ ὄψει αἰσθάνεσθαι) from “seeing” (τὸ ὁρᾶν) when he points out that “even when we do not see (μὴ ὁρῶμεν), we discern both darkness and light by sight (τῇ ὄψει κρίνομεν)” (425b20–22). He seems to mean that “perceiving by sight” is more than just “seeing” because we can perceive by sight even when our eyes are unaffected by color, as when we perceive darkness. Heard this way, “seeing” refers specifically to the whitening or reddening of the eyes. Likewise, in De somno, Aristotle treats “seeing” as an affair of the eye alone. He says that seeing is “peculiar” (ἴδιον) to sight (τῇ ὄψει, meaning, as I have argued, the eye) and does not involve the “common part of all the sense-organs,” that is, the heart (455a14–20). The heart houses the perceptual part of the soul (cf. Par. an. 678b2–4, Somn. 456a4–6, Iuv. 469a5–7), and perception, for Aristotle, involves both the soul and the body (De an. 1.1, 403a5–8, Sens. 436a6–10).^[22] This suggests that seeing, here, is not an act of perception in its own right, but refers specifically to the eye’s reception of color.^[23] I am not the first to read Aristotle in this way, and it is easy, I think, to see why. If seeing is a consciousness of color, it is hard to understand why our awareness of our seeing should involve an awareness of our eyes.^[24] But if Aristotle understands seeing, in this context, as the whitening or reddening of the eye, it makes sense for him to say that we perceive that we see by perceiving our eyes.^[25]

If we are to understand this idea, we need to know what it means to perceive the whitening or sweetening of our sense-organs. For our purposes, the most important thing to keep in mind is that Aristotle identifies two ways in which bodies can possess perceptible forms (colors, sounds, etc.), and two corresponding ways in which bodies can be perceptible.^[26] A body can have its own perceptible form, so as to be intrinsically perceptible (αἰσθητὸν καθ᾽ αὑτό); or it can have another body’s perceptible form, so as to be extrinsically perceptible (αἰσθητὸν δι᾽ ἀλλότριον).^[27] Consider, for example, a bell that sounds across a plaza. The bell is intrinsically audible: it possesses its own sound, the sound it makes when struck. By contrast, the air through which we hear the bell is not intrinsically audible: it cannot be struck so as to produce a sound (De an. 2.8, 419b6–9, b18–25). But when the bell sounds, it causes the air around it to vibrate and become resonant (419b18–25, 420a3–9; see γεγωνεῖ at 420a1).^[28] At this point, the air has become extrinsically audible. We can hear it, but what we hear in it is not the air’s sound (it has no sound of its own), but the bell’s sound. That is why the air can receive sound, become audible, and yet enable us to hear the bell. The same goes for the organ of hearing, which is simply air walled up inside the inner ear.^[29] To hear a bell’s sound in our ears is to hear the bell through our ears.

Aristotle understands the eye and the visual medium’s reception of color in much the same way. When light strikes a colored object, it reflects off it through the transparent medium and into the transparent inner eye. Just as a bell’s sound is present wherever its vibrations reach, so is an object’s color present wherever light from it has been reflected. Depending on the intensity of the reflected light, the medium and the inner eye become “whitened,” “reddened,” etc., and therefore visible.^[30] But they are only extrinsically visible: what we see in them are not their own colors (they have no colors of their own), but the colors of other objects. In a way, seeing the colors that our eyes receive is like seeing the colors reflected in a mirror. The color in the mirror is the color of the object reflected in it. But the eye (and the visual medium) becomes colored in an even more attenuated sense: not in the manner of a reflective body, but a transparent one. Aristotle rejects the view, which he attributes to Democritus, that vision involves the presence of an image in the eye. He corrects Democritus: it is not qua reflective but qua transparent that the eye receives color (Sens. 2, 438a13–14: οὐ μέντοι συμβαίνει τὸ ὁρᾶν [int. τῷ ὀφθαλμῷ, a11] ᾗ ὕδωρ [that is, qua reflective, a8–10] ἀλλ᾽ ᾗ διαφανές). Something’s color is in the eye in such a way as to be visible through it. In short: for someone’s eyes to be “whitened” by a piece of chalk, or for the chalk’s whiteness to be present in her eyes, is for the white chalk to be visible or apparent through her eyes.

This means that what we are conscious of, when we are conscious of the whitening of our eyes, is the appearance, to ourselves, of a white object. Note that what is apparent to us in this sense (visible, audible, etc.) is not, as such, perceived.^[31] As we saw in the Physics, perception is not only a bodily affection (a whitening of our eyes or a sweetening of our tongues), but a bodily affection of which we are conscious. It is a familiar fact of life that we can fail to perceive what is apparent to us through our sense-organs. As Aristotle points out in De sensu, “People do not perceive things right before their eyes (ὑποφερομένων ὑπὸ τὰ ὄμματα οὐκ αἰσθάνονται) if they are thinking hard, much afraid, or hearing a loud noise” (447a15–17). When someone is lost in thought (“thinking hard”), staring vacantly into the distance, her eyes are being “colored” by external objects. These objects are perfectly apparent to her, right before her eyes, and yet escape her notice. Given that we see an object (in the relevant sense of the term) just insofar as our eyes receive its color, it follows that our own seeing can escape our notice.^[32] It can escape us, in other words, that a colored object is apparent to us through our eyes. When it does not, we are perceiving that we see.

4

On the picture that has emerged, perceiving that we see is a matter of perceiving that a colored object is apparent to us through our eyes. This makes it easy to understand Aristotle’s basic purpose and argument in De anima 3.2. The starting point for his discussion is the familiar fact that we do not always perceive what is otherwise perfectly apparent to us (as, for example, when we are distracted). In Aristotle’s terms, this means that our seeing, namely, the whitening or reddening of our eyes, can escape out notice. His basic aim is to explain why the affections of our eyes do not always escape us, or how we manage to perceive that we see.

His opening question in De anima 3.2 is whether we perceive that we see “by sight” or “by another [sense].” As I have argued, “sight” (ὄψις) refers here, as often in Aristotle’s writings, to the organ of sight. Aristotle’s question is whether we perceive that we see by means of our eyes or some other sense-organ.^[33] This makes for a clear thematic continuity with De anima’s previous chapter, where Aristotle has just concluded that there is no special sense-organ for the perception of attributes like shape and size (οὐδὲ τῶν κοινῶν οἷόν τ᾽ εἶναι αἰσθητήριόν τι ἴδιον, 3.1, 425a14). Here in De anima 3.2, he is interested in a similar question: Do we need to posit any sense-organs beyond the familiar five in order to explain our ability to perceive that we see?

In some ways, it is intuitive to think that we will need to posit an additional sense-organ. If the whitening or reddening of our eyes can escape our notice, it is natural to think that when it does not escape us, it is not because of our eyes, but because of a sense-organ that somehow monitors them. Aristotle considers and rejects this possibility with two quick arguments. First (425b13–15), he points out that whether we perceive that we see “by sight” or “by another sense,” there will be one sense that has for its object both “sight” (the eye) and color. Why? If we perceive that we see by registering color’s presence in our eyes, then whether we do so by means of the eye or another sense-organ, one and the same sense-organ must be directed both towards the eye and the color that it receives. Since only “sight” (namely, the eye) has color for its object, it must be “of itself.”^[34]

We might try to avoid this conclusion by abandoning the principle that the eye alone perceives color. Perhaps another sense-organ is directed towards our eyes and the colors they receive. Aristotle rejects this possibility with a second argument (425b15–17). He points out that if we perceive that we see by means of a sense-organ other than the eye, we must ask about it, too, whether still another sense-organ has it for an object, or whether it is “of itself.” If it can be of itself, the eye should have been of itself in the first place. If the hypothetical sixth sense-organ is not of itself, a regress ensues (εἰς ἄπειρον εἶσιν, 425b16). After all, there is no reason that the affection of this sixth sense-organ should escape us any less than the original affection of our eyes. Aristotle concludes that sight must be of itself.

Socrates had expressed skepticism about this possibility in the Charmides: “If sight sees itself,” he says, “it must have a certain color” (169D). Aristotle agrees. But he reminds us that according to his theory of perception, there is a sense in which the eye “has color,” and therefore a sense in which it can see itself: when it receives color from colored objects, it becomes “in a way colored” (ὡς κεχρωμάτισται). As a result, it becomes visible. Indeed, it becomes visible to itself. After all, it comes to have its object within itself (namely, color), so that what is seen (τὸ ὁρώμενον) is present in what sees (τὸ ὁρῶν). There is no need for an “inner eye” with which to see our eyes and the colors that they receive. We see our eyes with our eyes. That is, we see the colors “in” them with the very things “in” which they are apparent.^[35]

Taken on its own, this explanation of the sense in which “sight” is “of itself” does not yet fully account for our ability to perceive that we see. After all, our eyes are “of themselves” just insofar as they receive something’s color. Given that the whitening or reddening of our eyes – that is, our seeing – can escape our notice, we still need an account of what makes for the difference between seeing and perceiving that we see.

Aristotle’s answer appears to come in the form of his reminder that “perceiving by sight is not one thing” (οὐχ ἓν τὸ τῇ ὄψει αἰσθάνεσθαι, 425b20). He explains that “even when we do not see, we discern (κρίνομεν) both darkness and light by sight (τῇ ὄψει)” (425b20–22). He is reiterating a point from earlier in De anima: “Sight is of the visible and of the invisible: for darkness is invisible, but sight discerns (κρίνει) it, too” (De an. 2.10, 422a21). Here in De anima 3.2, he adds that while discerning whether it is light or dark is a matter of “perceiving by sight,” it is not a matter of “seeing.” This makes sense if we “see” something just insofar as our eyes receive its color. Indeed, Aristotle has just identified what is seen with “color or what has it” (425b18–19). Since light and darkness are not colors or colored things, we do not “see” them.^[36] “Perceiving by sight” is therefore more than just “seeing.”

What more is it? Aristotle is sometimes taken to mean that sight has more than just color as its object. On this reading, his point is that if sight is not only “of” color but also “of” light and darkness, it might be “of” other things, too, like, for example, one’s own seeing.^[37] But a closer look at the text suggests that Aristotle has something more specific in mind. He seems to mean that in addition to an act of “seeing,” “perceiving by sight” is an act of “discernment” or “discrimination,” or what he calls “krinein.”^[38] After all, he says that “even when we do not see, we discern (krinein) both darkness and light by sight” (emphasis mine). There is some disagreement about how exactly to understand the act of krinein, but for our purposes, it is enough to say that it involves the awareness that something is some way (and that this is something of which non-rational animals are capable).^[39] In the act of krinein, a perceiver recognizes or identifies what is apparent to it through its sense-organs. Aristotle says, for example, that perceivers can “krinein that one [object] is two [objects]” (ἐκρίνομεν τὸ ἓν δύο, Insomn. 460b22), or “that [something] is white” (ὅτι λευκόν, De an. 3.3, 428b21).^[40]

Why should Aristotle remind us in De anima 3.2 that “perceiving by sight” is not just “seeing,” but also an act of krinein? It is a reminder that perception is more than just a matter of being appeared-to through our sense-organs. It is also a matter of using our sense-organs (usually automatically and unreflectively) to discern how things are: for example, that something looks thus or sounds so. We have seen that for Aristotle, something’s looking thus or sounding so to us is none other than our seeing or hearing it. So, when we are not only appeared-to in such and such a way, but perceive that we are so appeared-to (or, in other words, that something appears thus or so to us), we are perceiving that we see or hear. Likewise, when we perceive that nothing is apparent to us (as, for example, when we perceive that it is dark), we are perceiving that we do not see.^[41]

Understood this way, Aristotle’s argument in De anima establishes a very simple point: we perceive that things look thus or sound so to us – or, in other words, that we see or hear them – by means of our eyes and ears. The reason this does not go without saying is that objects can look thus or sound so to us without our perceiving them. That is, they can be apparent to us through our sense-organs and yet escape our notice. This makes it seem as if our eyes and ears are not sufficient for perceiving that we see and hear, and that we will need to posit some additional sense-organ to monitor them. But this impression rests on an artificially restrictive conception of the way in which our eyes and ears figure in perception. In Aristotle’s terms, it rests on the mistaken belief that “perceiving by sight,” for example, is only “one thing,” namely, seeing. For Aristotle, the eyes and ears do not simply receive appearances (“see,” “hear”). They are also the instruments of our acts of krinein, or the acts in which we use our eyes and ears to discern that things look thus or sound so. When our seeing or hearing escapes our notice, it is because we are, for example, “thinking hard, much afraid, or hearing a loud noise” (cf. Sens. 447a15–17), and not using our eyes and ears to discern how things appear to us.^[42]

5

It is clear at this point that Aristotle’s account of perceptual self-consciousness is not an account of the mind or soul’s quasi-perceptual relation to itself. We do not perceive our own seeing or hearing because we perceive our mental states with an inner sense; or because we experience their qualitative character; or because the mind or soul somehow becomes its own object. We perceive that we see and hear by perceiving worldly states of affairs that obtain between our sense-organs and external objects.

In one way, this conception of perceptual self-consciousness resembles a view in the contemporary philosophy of mind according to which our awareness of our own mental states is “transparent” to the worldly states of affairs that they represent.^[43] On this view, we come to know whether we believe that p simply by considering whether p. Likewise, we come to know whether we see that p simply by using our eyes to determine whether p (for example, whether there is a cat on the mat). At one level, Aristotle’s view is much the same: we determine whether we see a colored object by determining whether a colored object is apparent to us through our eyes. But for Aristotle, unlike the contemporary philosopher of mind, the awareness of our seeing or hearing is not the awareness of our mental (or psychological) states. What we are conscious of, when we are perceptually self-conscious, is not the state of our minds or souls, but a relation between our sense-organs and objects in the world.

This has significant implications for how we understand Aristotle’s approach to the study of perceptual self-consciousness. In the contemporary philosophy of mind, a theory of self-consciousness (or what is often called self-knowledge) typically takes as its starting point the idea that we know our own minds in a manner that is fundamentally different from the way in which we know both other people’s minds and worldly states of affairs. Our access to our own minds seems somehow immediate or peculiar or privileged. The task for a theory of self-consciousness is to explain the nature of this privileged access: are mental states somehow self-intimating? Known through an inner sense? Transparent to the world?^[44] These are the sorts of questions that the most influential recent interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of perceptual self-consciousness have tried to answer. But for Aristotle, seeing and hearing are not mental states (or states of our souls). He is offering a theory of perceptual self-consciousness that is not addressed to the question how we know our own minds.

We have seen that Aristotle’s account of perceiving that we perceive responds to Plato’s Charmides, where Socrates’ interest in perceptual self-consciousness (or whether “sight” and “hearing” are ever “of themselves”) is one moment in a broader inquiry into the possibility of self-knowledge.^[45] In this context, self-knowledge is the knowledge of what one does and does not know. It is an important theme of the dialogue that at least in general, knowledge is possessed self-consciously. Consider doctors, for example. In the first instance, they know about health and disease. But they are also able to tell whether other people are doctors. (They know what questions to ask, what to look for, etc.) The art of medicine is therefore not only a knowledge of health and disease, but also, in a sense, a knowledge “of itself”: it enables its possessor to recognize its presence or absence in others (170D–171C). But a doctor who can tell whether someone else is a doctor is also in a position to tell that she herself is a doctor. As Critias remarks (and Socrates agrees), “When a person possesses a knowledge which knows itself [that is, a knowledge that is “of itself”] […] he will be a person who knows himself” (169E). In other words, a person whose knowledge is “of itself” is someone who knows herself to know what she knows. She is a self-knowing or self-conscious knower. This form of self-consciousness is of great practical significance (cf. Charm. 171D–172A). Unless doctors know health and disease self-consciously (that is, knowing that they know it), they will not know that they are the ones who should make diagnoses and practice surgery. When a doctor judges that a wound should be cauterized, she does so conscious of herself as a doctor, or one who is well-positioned to pass judgments about health and disease.

I suggest that perceptual self-consciousness is significant to Aristotle for similar reasons. Consider, for example, his observation that “it is not when we are fully exercising [our senses] (ἐνεργῶμεν ἀκριβῶς) with regard to an object of perception that we say this appears to us to be a man (ὅτι φαίνεται τοῦτο ἡμῖν ἄνθρωπος), but rather when we do not perceive it distinctly (μὴ ἐναργῶς αἰσθανώμεθα)” (De an. 3.3, 428a13–15). Aristotle is imagining a case in which someone sees a distant figure that resembles a man. She is aware that she does not see it clearly or distinctly, so she says only that there appears to be a man in the distance, not there there is one. If she blinks a few times, rubs her eyes, and looks again, she might judge that there is, after all, a man in the distance. If so, it is because she has perceived that she sees a man. She has determined, by looking, that a man is apparent to her through her eyes. Like the Charmides’ self-conscious knower, this self-conscious perceiver is conscious of herself as well-positioned to pass judgment. She judges that there is a man in the distance because she perceives that she sees him.^[46]

Of course, she might be wrong. Our capacity to perceive that we see and hear is fallible, as Aristotle makes clear in De insomniis:

It is because the motion arrives at the ruling principle (τὴν ἀρχὴν) from there [that is, “from sight,” “from hearing,” and “from the other sense-organs,” 461a28–30] that also in waking life one seems to see and hear and perceive (καὶ ἐγρηγορὼς δοκεῖ ὁρᾶν καὶ ἀκούειν καὶ αἰσθάνεσθαι); and it is because sight seems sometimes to be moved, though it is not, that we affirm that we see (ὁρᾶν φαμέν), and because the sense of touch reports (εἰσαγγέλλειν) two motions that one object seems to be two. For in general the ruling principle affirms what comes from each sense (τὸ ἀφ᾽ ἑκάστης αἰσθήσεώς φησιν ἡ ἀρχή) unless something more authoritative contradicts it (ἀντιφῇ). (Insomn. 461a30–b5)

We merely seem to ourselves to see or hear or feel something when our sense-organs merely seem to be moved or affected in a certain way. Aristotle refers in particular to a tactile illusion in which, crossing two fingers, we seem to feel two things when in fact there is only one. In this case, we do not perceive that we feel two things, but only seem to do so. When we are dreaming, we seem to ourselves to see or hear something that is not really there. Unless something in us “contradicts” (ἀντιφῇ) the appearances, we take it that something is apparent to us through our sense-organs when nothing is there at all (Insomn. 461b29–462a8).^[47]

Given that we are not always taken in by appearances, it is natural to wonder whether there is a mark by which we can be certain that we see something (or something of a particular sort) and do not merely seem to see it. Some have found glimmers of this idea in Aristotle’s claim that we cannot be deceived about the proper objects of sense (color, flavor, etc.; see De an. 2.6, 418a11–16). But the question does not become central for Aristotle as it does in Hellenistic philosophy, where the debate between skeptics and dogmatists centers on the question whether there exists a “cataleptic impression” (φαντασία καταληπτική), an appearance self-certifying, as it were, in its clarity and distinctness. The cataleptic impression, if it exists, would be so clear and distinct as to guarantee that things could not be otherwise than they seem. We could be certain that we see a man, for example, and do not merely seem to see one.^[48] This Hellenistic debate is a development of the fundamentally epistemological interest in self-consciousness that we find in Aristotle’s account of perceiving that we perceive. In effect, skeptics and dogmatists disagree about whether perceptual self-consciousness can be infallible. It is well known that the debate over the cataleptic impression grows out of Socratic concerns about whether we can know what we know and do not know.^[49] At this point, we can see that Aristotle’s account of perceiving that we perceive belongs to the same broad family of epistemological concerns.

These epistemological concerns bring us back to Descartes, whose search for infallible knowledge leads him to his famous cogito. Descartes claims to be certain that he is seeing light or hearing a noise. But he is not taking sides in the Hellenistic debate between skeptics and dogmatists. The Hellenistic philosophers wanted to know whether we can ever be certain that it is actually light out or that we are really hearing something.^[50] Descartes finds his certainty only by defining seeing and hearing as seeming to see and seeming to hear, and, more generally, by bringing sense-perception under the umbrella of the cogito. In Descartes’ hands, seeing and hearing become modes of “thought” (cogitatio), or of “everything which we are aware of as happening within us (in nobis fiunt)” (A. T. VIII 7).

This moment in the Meditations is the first time in the history of philosophy that perception gets counted as a mode of “thought,” or as what we today would call a mental state.^[51] Indeed, many have argued that Descartes’ definition of perception as a form of thought marks the birth of the modern concept of the mind as an inner space, containing the objects of our immediate awareness, and known to us in some peculiarly direct and intimate way.^[52] Only if we operate with a concept of mind along these Cartesian lines does it make sense to think that we could explain our awareness of our own seeing or hearing by suggesting that the mind or soul stands in some sort of quasi-perceptual relation to itself. That is, only if we grant that seeing and hearing are inner states of mind will we try to explain perceptual self-consciousness by positing an inner sense; or by suggesting that the mind somehow becomes its objects in the act of perception; or by claiming that the qualitative character of our mental states renders them self-conscious. Aristotle, innocent of this Cartesian concept of mind, is innocent of the temptation to explain perceptual self-consciousness in terms of some metaphorical self-perception on the part of the mind or soul. For Aristotle, we really do perceive our own seeing and hearing: we determine, by looking and listening with our eyes and ears, that something looks thus or sounds so to us.