• DOI:10.1086/352843
• Corpus ID: 27806323

Getting the Big Picture in Perspectivist Optics

@article{Smith1981GettingTB,
  title={Getting the Big Picture in Perspectivist Optics},
  author={A. Mark Smith},
  journal={Isis},
  year={1981},
  volume={72},
  pages={568 - 589}
}

• A. M. Smith
• Published 1 December 1981
• Philosophy
• Isis

nature, this representation is not universal; on the contrary, it is as particular as the physical object it represents. 13 Still, it forms the immediate source of intellectual abstraction, accomplished at the third and final stage of inductionwhich I shall call "apperception." It is at this, the highest, level that we attain a full conceptual grasp of external particulars by abstracting the intelligibilia (e.g., pure Triangularity or Humanity) from their perceptible representations, and that furnishes us with the wherewithal or, if you prefer, the premises of syllogistic reasoning. 14 These three stages of induction were understood by Aristotle as material functions: functions, that is, of the physical sense organ and the material soul (the "mind," loosely speaking). Hence the act of sense cognition is determined doubly, by the nature of what is abstracted and by the nature of what abstracts. In explicating the latter, Aristotle fell back upon the notion of "faculties" or capacities: II According to Aristotle, each sense has a sole "proper sensible" or "proper object" it is designed by nature to grasp. Thus, odor is the proper object of smell, just as sound is of hearing or savor of taste (De anima II 6, 418A10-13). Of the five senses, two (touch and taste) are immediate, so the remaining three occur over distance through a medium (De sensu 1, 436B13-20). That sight must occur through a medium is empirically verified by the fact that, when placed directly upon the eye, an object cannot be seen (De anima II 7, 419A1214). 12Having no specific organ and so being proper to none, the common sensibles-which Aristotle enumerates as movement, rest, figure, magnitude, number, and unity-are perceived incidentally through the five special senses and thus inferred from the primary sense data (De anima II 6, 418B18-26 and III 1, 425A14-19). 13Cf. De anima III 3. "4Posterior Analytics II 19, 100B5-17.