Abstract
Our perceptual experience is far from being completed by the operations of the external senses. It is not a simple process through which we perceive isolated ‘sense data’ or discrete psychological atoms, such as colours, sounds, odours and sapours. Beside the external senses, which perceive the proper sensibles, and derivatively also the common and in concreto incidental sensibles, there are several post-sensory operations contributing significantly to the formation, retention and combination of our unified percept. We perceive the sensibles belonging to different modalities in a combined way as belonging to one and the same sensible object. At the level of sensory perception, we recognize agreements and distinctions not only within the sensible qualities of a particular sensory modality such as white and black in the case of sight but also among the sensibles belonging to the different external senses. We perceptually judge that white is not sweet or that what is white, for example, milk is also sweet. Moreover, we often apprehend these combined perceptual wholes with an additional aspect that is expressed in terms of the object’s convenience or inconvenience. We do not perceive objects ‘neutrally’ or from a purely theoretical point of view. In fact, only when perceived as convenient or inconvenient can sensible objects stimulate operations of the sensory appetite and be ‘supervised’ and commanded by the higher appetite, namely the will, and followed by a behavioural response executed by the locomotive power. Accordingly, our perception is frequently ‘tinted’ by practical intentions that are not detected as being separate from the perceived sensible wholes. Such separation can only be performed by the intellect. Concrete sensible wholes are apprehended also according to other aspects. We perceive this white man as Thaddeus and this small girl as Mary. Moreover, not only do we perceive present objects, we are also aware of absent or even impossible objects that do not and cannot exist extramentally.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For Suárez the virtus motiva is to be understood as a power really distinct from the appetite and irreducible to a mere passive obedience of the appetite. For this, see CDA disp. 13, q. unica, 424–43.
- 2.
See CDA disp. 9, q. 3, n. 16, t. 3, 136. Only the intellect can consider friendship or enmity as such.
- 3.
Although Suárez advocates a theory of a single interior sense, I have sometimes applied and will at times employ the term in plural, ‘the internal senses’, since Suárez himself assumes that there are conceptual distinctions within this single power and uses the phrase in plural too. These conceptual distinctions are based on a comparison with its various acts (CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 24, 44–6). See also 5.2.
- 4.
CDA disp. 8, q. 2, n. 1, t. 3, 46: ‘Obiectum ergo istius sensus est omne sensibile quod sensu externo percipitur’.
- 5.
For this division, see, e.g. Mastrius and Belluto, In libros De anima, disp. 5, q. 8, art. 2, § 242, 117: ‘Quae possunt obiici interno sensui ad duo membra videntur reducibilia, vel enim sunt sensationes ipsae, vel res ad extra’.
- 6.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 3, t. 3, 16. For this comparison, see Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram libri duodecim, book 12, ch. 16, n. 32.
- 7.
For this function of the common sense, see ibid. n. 2, 14–6.
- 8.
For the perception of incidental sensibles, which according to Aquinas are distinctly detected by the vis cogitativa, and for Suárez’s critique of this view, see 5.3.1.
- 9.
CDA disp. 8, q. 2, n. 1, t. 3, 46–8.
- 10.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 11, t. 3, 24.
- 11.
DM disp. 54, s. 2, n. 18, t. 2, 1023–4. If not corrected by the intellect, the phantasy often falls into illusions since sensory powers can consider their objects only with reference to existence whether present or past. This is also why, properly speaking, they cannot conceive something as nonbeing. Unlike the intellect, they cannot abstract from existence and consider the pure essence of an object. If the phantasy were left as it were to itself, i.e. without the supervision of the intellect, it would fall into incorrect judgements about these impossible beings. It would always judge them to be extramentally real. This often happens in dreams when the intellect is ‘turned off’. For this see CDA disp. 6, q. 5, n. 9, t. 2, 528.
- 12.
See CDA disp. 5, q. 2, n. 26, t. 2, 328–30 and disp. 6, q. 1, n. 11, t. 2, 468.
- 13.
Scotus, Ord. IV, d. 45, q. 3, n. 95 (Vat. 14: 167). For Scotus, see also Cross (2014, 27–32).
- 14.
For Olivi, see Toivanen (2013b, 275–81).
- 15.
It may be objected that this modularistic isolation of the common sense’s act from the operation of the external senses necessarily leads to the fragmentation of our perceptual experience, which is at odds with the requirement of a unified percept. The senses perceive at first the proper objects and concomitantly their acts and only then the common sense’s (unified) species modified by the external senses’ awareness of their operations is produced and its act is brought about. I agree that in this respect Suárez’s common sense can be understood as being detached from the external sensorium of the particular senses. However, I do not think that on the phenomenological level this fragmentation must be a necessary consequence. One ought not to forget that for Suárez this sequence is not temporal. The external senses’ and the common sense’s operations mediated by the soul take place at the same time.
- 16.
For Suárez’s theory of the intellect’s knowledge of its own acts conceived as qualities by means of the proper intelligible species, which is a view different from that of Aquinas (who does without them in this kind of intellectual self-awareness), see CDA disp. 9, q. 5, n. 6, t. 3, 174. See also Rode (2015, 373–5) and Perler (2014a, 277–9).
- 17.
For this, see CDA disp. 8, q. 2, n. 5, t. 3, 50.
- 18.
CDA disp. 5, q. 1, n. 5, t. 2, 290.
- 19.
In most places of CDA disp. 5 and disp. 9 Suárez employs the term ‘phantasma’ in the sense of the internal sense’s species, which (as we know) has only virtual representation. On the other hand, there are other places in which he takes it as a second act or mental representation. One of these is the passage in which he says that a phantasm is an exemplary cause of the agent intellect’s production of the intelligible species (for this, see CDA disp. 9, q. 2, n. 12, t. 3, 96).
- 20.
CDA disp. 5, q. 2, n. 3, t. 2, 298.
- 21.
For Suárez’s view of the origin of the species of the interior sense, see Heider (2019b, 176–8).
- 22.
CDA disp. 6, q. 5, n. 7, t. 2, 524.
- 23.
CDA disp. 6, q. 2, n. 9, t. 2, 478–80.
- 24.
CDA disp. 6, q. 5, n. 8, t. 2, 526.
- 25.
CDA disp. 6, q. 2, n. 10, t. 2, 482.
- 26.
Ibid., n. 12, 484.
- 27.
Ibid., n. 13, 486: ‘Probabile est huiusmodi species interiores resultare in interiori sensu propria vi et activitate illius, et non per efficientiam alicuius extrinseci’. Even though in CDA disp. 6, q. 2, n. 13 Suárez does not explicitly say that this view is more probable (he says only that it is ‘probabile’), the overall context of CDA disp. 5–6 and especially disp. 9, q. 2 devoted to the issue of the production of the intelligible species and his explicit reference to the theory of the harmony of powers and their acts make it, in my opinion, more probable than the previous conclusion.
- 28.
Ibid., n. 13, 486.
- 29.
- 30.
See also CDA disp. 2, q. 3, n. 45, t.1, 228: ‘[…] operatio unius potentiae potest dependere ab aliqua materiali potentia […] tamquam a proponente obiectum eiusdem ordinis et rationis, ut pendet […] operatio phantasiae a sensibus externis […]’ For Suárez’s theory of cognitive acts (formal concepts) conceived as exemplary causes in connection with his tenet of the endpoint of a cognitive act, see also 3.5.
- 31.
This is also why Suárez holds that the primary objects of intellectual cognition are material and sensible singulars (substances aggregated with per se sensible accidents) and not universal quiddities. For this theory, see CDA disp. 9, q. 3, n. 15, t. 3, 130–2. For this statement about the intellectual cognition of material singulars considered as a significant point of departure of Suárez’s epistemology in general, see Rinaldi (1998). I will show in 5.3.1 that this immediate intellection of material singulars is also one of the main reasons why Suárez refuses to attribute the apprehension of the so-called particular intentions to the vis cogitativa.
- 32.
CDA disp. 6, q. 2, n. 16, t. 2, 492.
- 33.
Pattin (1988, 420).
- 34.
For Suárez’s view of the real identity of the agent and the passive intellect, which parallels the real identity of the agent and the passive sense in the interior senses, see CDA disp. 9, q. 8, n. 18, t. 3, 234–6 and disp. 9, q. 10, n. 8, t. 3, 272, where Suárez ‘inserts’ only the conceptual distinction between them. For the same view of Agostino Nifo, see ‘De sensu agente’, in In librum Destructio Destructionum Averrois commentationes, 129a.
- 35.
For this, see CDA disp. 6, q. 5, n. 8, t. 2, 526.
- 36.
For this distinction presented also by Olivi, see Toivanen (2013b, 305–6).
- 37.
CDA disp. 9, q. 3, n. 14, t. 3, 128–30.
- 38.
For Avicenna, see his Liber de anima seu Sextus de naturalibus, p. 1, ch. 5, 86.
- 39.
For Aquinas see, e.g., De veritate, q. 25, art. 2, c., 733: ‘Sicut vis imaginativa competit animae sensibili secundum propriam rationem, quia in ea reservantur formae per sensum acceptae; sed vis aestimativa, per quam animal apprehendit intentiones non acceptas per sensum, ut amicitiam vel inimicitiam, inest animae sensitivae secundum quod participat aliquid rationis […]’
- 40.
CDA disp. 6, q. 2, n. 15, t. 2, 490.
- 41.
For a famous critique of these intentions as distinct objects, see Scotus, Ord. I, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 1–2, n. 62 (Vat. 3: 43–4). Scotus says that a lamb would flee from a sheep miraculously changed to a wolf with all of its sensible qualities. However, it would not do that, if it had an estimation of the non-sensed agreeability of the object.
- 42.
CDA disp. 6, q. 2, n. 15, t. 2, 492.
- 43.
Ibid.: ‘[…] ex dictis patet, quomodo fiat’.
- 44.
See, e.g. CDA disp. 11, q. 1, n. 2, t. 3, 326: ‘Hi [the external senses] enim non movent appetitum immediate; sumendum est ergo est ex interiori sensu’.
- 45.
For their theories, see Heider (2017a); for Suárez and Góis, see also Silva (2020). Considering Suárez’s theory of the single internal sense which is in charge of the manifold operations I cannot share Harry Wolfson’s (1935, 126) assessment according to which this reduction of the internal senses to the unique sense of phantasy took place as late as with Eustachius a S. Paulo (ca. 1573–1640) and that Eustachius set the tone for the early modern debates. For Eustachius’s view, see Tertia pars Summae philosophicae, tomus posterior, tract. III., disp. III, q. 1, 391–4. Moreover, leaving aside the fact that Eustachius’s Summa was nothing but a brief excerpt from Jesuit authors, especially from Suárez and the Coimbrans, there were also several other authors in medieval philosophy, such as Olivi, who embraces the theory of a single internal sense. For Olivi, see Toivanen (2013b, 247–65).
- 46.
Deborah Black (2000) concludes that the cognitive operations and functions of particular internal senses in the theories of representatives of medieval scholasticism differ to the extent that it is difficult to detect common features in them.
- 47.
For Aquinas’s view as the backdrop of Suárez’s theory, see South (2001b).
- 48.
For these criteria, see Avicenna, Liber de anima seu Sextus de naturalibus I–II–III, p. 1, ch. 5, 85–90. Describing these principles is a set agenda in the secondary literature devoted to the topic of the internal senses. See Black (2000, 59–60); Toivanen (2013b, 231–45); Hasse (2014, 308–9); Simon Kemp and Fletcher (1993, 561–5); Casini (2006, 100–2); Harvey (1975, 43–6), and many others.
- 49.
See Thomas de Aquino, STh. I, q. 78, art. 4, 255–7.
- 50.
Accordingly, this ‘intention’ cannot be understood in the sense we know from logic, philosophy of mind, or theory of action. Neither can it be identified with logical intention, nor with a conceptual content of a mental state, nor with an ethical aim of an agent. Although it is immaterial, it exists only as connected with a sense-perceived form. This is also why it is properly translated as ‘connotational attribute’. For this translation, see Hasse (2000, 127–32).
- 51.
In Chap. 4 we have seen that this logic of the mixture based on the first qualities, namely on the difference in the prevalence of the moist over the dry and the dry over the moist, was also the reason for the constitution of the different mixtures giving rise to the different sensible qualities of sapour and odour.
- 52.
Despite Aquinas’s reluctance to explicitly correlate the internal senses with the individual ventricles, in his Opera omnia we can find the following statements from Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 10, art. 5, c., 309 locating the cogitative power in the middle ventricle: ‘[Et] sic singularibus se immiscet mediante ratione particulari, quae est potentia quaedam sensitivae partis componens et dividens intentiones individuales, quae alio nomine dicitur cogitativa, et habet determinatum organum in corpore, scilicet mediam cellulam capitis’; see also Thomas de Aquino, STh. I, q. 78, art. 4, c., 256: ‘Et ideo quae in aliis animalibus dicitur aestimativa naturalis, in homine dicitur cogitativa […] Unde etiam dicitur ratio particularis, cui medici assignant determinatum organum, scilicet mediam partem capitis […]’
- 53.
See Galen, De symptomatum differentiis, ch. 3, 225–7. For Suárez’s presentation of this view of Galen’s, see CDA disp. 8, q. 2, n. 8, t. 3, 56.
- 54.
For these modifications influenced by Averroes, see Black (2000, 66–8).
- 55.
Aquinas, STh I, q. 78, art. 4, c., 256: ‘Avicenna vero ponit quintam potentiam mediam inter aestimativam et imaginativam, quae componit et dividit formas imaginatas, ut patet cum ex forma imaginata auri et forma imaginata montis componimus unam formam montis aurei, quem nunquam vidimus. Sed ista operatio non apparet in aliis animalibus ab homine, in quo ad hoc sufficit virtus imaginativa’.
- 56.
- 57.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 14, t. 3, 28.
- 58.
Ibid., n. 15, 32.
- 59.
Ibid., n. 16, 32–4.
- 60.
For the definition of real distinction based on the mutual separability of the extremes, see DM disp. 7, s. 2, n. 2, 261.
- 61.
For this segment, see CDA disp. 8, q. 2, nn. 3–6, t. 3, 48–54.
- 62.
Ibid., n. 3, 48.
- 63.
Aristotle, Metaphysics I.1, 980a28–33, 3.
- 64.
DM disp. 1, q. 6, n. 17, t. 1, 58.
- 65.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 17, t. 3, 34.
- 66.
The structurally same argument but in a reversed order is applicable in Suárez’s reasoning for direct intellectual cognition of material singulars. If a less perfect capacity, such as the senses, can directly apprehend singulars, then the intellect, being a higher power, must be capable of doing it too. For this, see CDA disp. 9, q. 3, n. 9, t. 3, 120.
- 67.
For this, see CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 4, t. 3, 20.
- 68.
Aristotle, On Memory and Recollection, ch. 1, 450a10–1, 293. Just this claim of Suárez’s became the target of Anthony Lisska’s critique: ‘If this distinction between these two internal sense faculties [sc. the common sense and the phantasy] is denied, then it is easy to have a phantasm become the object of both imagination (Fancy) and the sensus communis […] The phantasm becomes the tertium quid, which is the direct object of knowledge in the sensus communis. While Suárez may have held this position on the epistemological placement of the phantasm, Aquinas did not. To render a phantasm the direct object of knowledge in the sensus communis in Aquinas is to render Aquinas’s theory into the account possibly put forward by Suárez’. (Lisska, 297). Elsewhere he says: ‘Deely notes that Suárez’s position on sensation was structurally similar to Locke’s–i.e. an image is required for sensation’. (ibid., 185, footnote 29); ‘Suárez: The sensible qualities are images (phantasms) formed by the sense faculties through the causal interaction of the thing with the sense faculty. This is epistemological representationalism’. (ibid., 231); ‘Considering the influence of Suárez on these philosophy-of-mind matters, Deely has written: ‘Locke’s (and Descartes’s) position is rather that of Suárez, who held that external sense, no less than internal sense and understanding, required the formation of species expressa (i.e. an image or an idea) to produce its object of apprehension’’. (ibid., 235); ‘Suárez possibly adopted an ‘image position’ for his account of phantasm’. (ibid., 298). For Lisska the presence of a phantasm in the common sense is the result of Suárez’s excessive reductionist account of the internal senses. Unlike Aquinas, Suárez conflated the external sensorium of which the common sense is part with the internal sensorium of the phantasy which is productive of images conceived as that in which the objects are cognized. That this view of the expressed species is not that of Suárez has been sufficiently shown above in 3.5. For this, see also South (2001a).
- 69.
See CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 17, t. 3, 34–6.
- 70.
For the same rejection of this physiological criterion, see Olivi in Toivanen (2013b, 252–3).
- 71.
For this, see CDA disp. 5, q. 1, n. 6, t. 2, 292–4 (see also 3.1).
- 72.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 18, t. 3, 36. For the doctrinal variability related to the number and the function of the particular brain cavities, see also Mastrius and Belluto, In libros de anima, disp. 5, q. 8, art. 5, § 282, 124: ‘Nec minor dissensio est inter hac sententias [concerning the number of the interior senses], ut assignent organa uniuscujusque potentiae; hinc cellulas cerebri ad libitum assignant’.
- 73.
Galen, De usu partium corporis humani, book 8, ch. 10–11, 479–84.
- 74.
For Suárez’s denial of Galen’s view, see 4.4.3.
- 75.
See CDA disp. 6, q. 6, n. 10, t. 2, 540.
- 76.
CDA disp. 8, q. 2, n. 8, t. 3, 56–8.
- 77.
For a similar identification of the estimative faculty and the common sense based on the interconnectedness of the psychological functions of perception and estimation in Olivi, see Toivanen (2013b, 332–9).
- 78.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 19, t. 3, 38.
- 79.
- 80.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 24, t. 3, 44–6.
- 81.
- 82.
Klubertanz (1952, 202–3, 205, 256–7, and elsewhere).
- 83.
Lisska (2016, 245).
- 84.
Ibid., 317.
- 85.
Lisska (2016, 258–61, 317, and passim).
- 86.
Adam Wodeham (1298–1358), among others, went so far as to attribute such ‘proto-intellectual’ operations to the interior senses of nonrational animals as well. For this, see Tachau (1993). Attributing these operations to perfect animals is motivated by the observation of remarkably prudent and providential kinds of behaviour among brutes. Many of these phenomena can be found in Aristotle’s History of Animals IX.6, 611b33ff, 245ff.
- 87.
- 88.
For the centrality of the cogitative power in Aquinas’s cognitive and affective theory, see in addition to Lisska and Fabro, the recent contribution by De Haan (2014).
- 89.
- 90.
For this principle in Dionysius the Aeropagite, see his above-quoted On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, ch. 7, § 3, 79. For Pseudo-Dionysius’s (and also Proclus’s) influence on medieval and Renaissance philosophy in respect to this scala naturae, see Mahoney (2000).
- 91.
In many loci in the works of Aquinas, Cajetan and other Thomists these operations are granted to the cogitative power. The most frequently quoted passage by Aquinas is STh. I, q. 78, art. 4, c., 256: ‘Sed quantum ad intentiones praedictas [intentiones quae per sensum non accipiuntur], differentia est: nam alia animalia percipiunt huiusmodi intentiones solum naturali quodam instinctu, homo autem etiam per quandam collationem. Et ideo quae in aliis animalibus dicitur aestimativa naturalis, in homine dicitur cogitativa, quae per collationem quandam huiusmodi intentiones adinvenit. Unde etiam dicitur ratio particularis, cui medici assignant determinatum organum, scilicet mediam partem capitis: est enim collativa intentionum individualium, sicut ratio intellectiva intentionum universalium’; Thomas de Aquino, Sentencia libri de anima, book 2, l. 13, 191–7, 121: ‘Si vero apprehendatur in singulari, utputa cum video coloratum, percipio hunc hominem vel hoc animal, huiusmodi quidem apprehensio in homine fit per vim cogitativam, quae dicitur etiam ratio particularis eo quod est collativa intentionum individualium, sicut ratio universalis est collativa rationum universalium […]’; Thomas de Aquino, Summa contra gentiles, book 2, cap. 73, 460: ‘Virtus cogitativa non habet ordinem ad intellectum possibilem, quo intelligit homo, nisi per suum actum quo praeparantur phantasmata ut per intellectum agentem fiant intelligibilia actu et perficientia intellectum possibilem’; Cajetan In STh I-IIa, q. 74, art. 4, IV, 39: ‘Vires namque animae in parte sensitiva, sicut in cognoscendo sunt secundum se excellentes totam naturam brutorum, ut patet in cogitativa et reminiscentia habentibus collativam vim particularium; ita in appetendo sunt secundum se excellentes totam naturam brutorum, per hoc quod appetunt cum quadam libertate. Ita quod non solum ex hoc quod actualiter moventur vel non moventur a voluntati; sed seipsis, quia sunt tales, quod superius vocavimus quia sunt volentis, sunt quodammodo liberae. Dico autem quoddamodo, quia non habent tantum libertatis ut possint in actum deliberatum; sed vestigium quoddam libertatis sortitae sunt ex elevatione in naturam rationalem, a qua fluunt. Eadem autem vires appetitivae sensitivae, ut actualiter motae et moventes a parte superiori, tantum libertatis participant ut etiam in deliberatos actus possint […] Quo fit ut, quia sensualitas secundum se habet tantum libertatis ut sufficiat ad peccatum veniale, ideo peccatum ei tribuitur: quia vero non habet tantum rationalitatis ut possit in peccatum mortale, quia non est eius respicere bonum rationis ut finem, ideo ei non attribuitur peccatum mortale’. See also Thomas de Aquino, STh. I-IIae, q. 74, art. 3, 32. For other Thomists than Cajetan, see Domingo Báñez, Scholastica commentaria in primam partem Angelici Doctoris D. Thomae: a quaestione LXV vsque ad CXI, q. 78, art. 4, dub. 2, 273–7. For Suárez’s critique of Cajetan’s view according to which some cardinal virtues, namely temperance and fortitude, are subjected in the sensory appetite, see Heider and Machula (2019).
- 92.
While according to the despotical subordination view the higher power, namely the will, forces the lower power, sc., the sensory appetite, in such a way that the lower cannot decline the command of the higher, according to the political subordination view it governs it in such a way that it can decline. For this, see CDA disp. 11, q. 3, t. 3, 356–67; see also Suárez, De voluntario et involuntario, disp. 10, s. 2, 272–3. For Aristotle’s claim, see his Politics (1984) I.5, 1254b3–6, 1990.
- 93.
For the claim that fortitude and temperance are virtues of the irrational parts of the soul, see Aristotle (1984), Nicomachean Ethics III.10, 1117b24–5, 1764.
- 94.
CDA disp. 6, q. 1, nn. 2–3, t. 2, 456.
- 95.
CDA disp. 9, q. 4, nn. 1–4, t. 3, 152–8.
- 96.
CDA disp. 9, q. 4, n. 5, t. 3, 158–60: ‘Et confirmatur utraque conclusio [i.e., the intellect does not primarily cognize the incidental sensibles through their own intelligible species and it does not produce the proper and the distinct concept of these sensibles] ex mysterio sacramenti Eucharistiae, nam ibi eodem modo sentiuntur accidentia panis quo aliae res sensibiles; et in aliis rebus non magis sentitur subectum accidentium quam ibi; sed ibi ex phantasmate panis consecrati non producitur in intellectu species propria substantiae panis nec proprius illius conceptus, quia ibi vere non est talis substantia, ergo neque in aliis rebus sensibilibus acquiritur illa species vel formatur talis conceptus, alias posset intellectus diiudicare an sub his accidentibus esset substantia necne’.
- 97.
It should be said that the recognition of an object as X already requires the involvement of memory. In perceiving an object as Peter I assign my perceptual experience to one of the objects that are conserved in my memory.
- 98.
CDA disp. 9, q. 4, n. 3, t. 3, 156.
- 99.
Ibid. n. 7, t. 3, 162.
- 100.
CDA disp. 9, q. 5, n. 4, t. 3, 172–4.
- 101.
I cannot agree with the argument according to which the emergentist origin of the species of the interior sense (not caused efficiently by an act of the external senses) is the reason why already the interior sense ‘interprets’ the confusedly apprehended incidental sensible, such as substance. It cannot be said that the substance of the per se sensibles is distinctly cognized by the interior sense because of the availability of the unsensed species that represent them to the power. As Suárez makes it clear, there are no unsensed species detected by the internal sense and the sensibles per accidens are not represented by modification of the species representing the proper sensibles either. They are only hidden intrinsic parts of the sensible accidental wholes.
- 102.
In this connection South (2001b, 135–6) pointedly says: ‘After all, the incidental sensible, separate from the proper sensibles, would be another type of unsensed species, and we have already seen that Suárez has no use for such species. The result is that there is no proper sensed species of the substance itself. Instead, we properly sense only its accidents. Consequently, for Suárez, incidental perception is of little moment’.
- 103.
For Suárez’s theory of the individuation of accidents, see Heider (2005).
- 104.
See CDA disp. 5, q. 6, nn. 13–4, t. 2, 424–30.
- 105.
For this conclusion, see also Suárez, TDA book 3, ch. 6, n. 8, 639. Castellote’s edition in CDA disp. 5, q. 6, n. 15, t. 2, 430 states imprecisely: ‘Nullus etiam sensus interior hominis potest apprehendere vel iudicare componendo et dividendo. Unde huiusmodi iudicium in universum excedit limites potentiae cognoscitivae’. [my italics]. Of course, this kind of judgment does not exceed the possibility of the intellectual power.
- 106.
CDA disp. 5, q. 6, n. 15, t. 2, 430: ‘Huic conclusioni non omnes consentiunt […]’
- 107.
Ibid., n. 16, 432.
- 108.
Ibid., n. 17, 432–4.
- 109.
CDA disp. 11, q. 3, n. 3, t. 3, 362.
- 110.
He refers also to Aquinas’s formulation from STh. I-IIae, q. 74, art. 1, c., 35: ‘Cum autem proprium sit actuum moralium quod sint voluntarii, ut supra habitum est; sequitur quod voluntas, quae est principium actuum voluntariorum, sive bonorum sive malorum, quae sunt peccata, sint principium peccatorum. Et ideo sequitur quod peccatum sit in voluntate sicut in subiecto’. However, elsewhere Aquinas explicitly says that there is venial sin in sensuality (see STh. I-IIae, q. 74, art. 3, ad 3, 37; art. 4, ad 3, 38).
- 111.
For this, see Francisco Suárez, De actibus qui vocantur passiones, tum etiam de habitibus, praesertim studiosis ac vitiosis, disp. 3, s. 7, n. 5, 493: ‘Omnes virtutes morales per se primo esse in voluntate. Nam actus istarum virtutum sunt eliciti a voluntate: ergo generant in illa virtutis habitum’. Even though in the second conclusion of this section he admits that some habits of moral virtues facilitating virtuous acts are created in the sensory appetite (habits can also be produced in the interior sense–for this, see DM disp 44, s. 4, n. 7, t. 2, 670), in the third conclusion he leaves no doubt that these habits are not virtues in the proper sense but only in a certain respect (secundum quid) and through an extrinsic denomination (per denominationem extrinsecam). Ibid., nn. 9–11, 494–5. For Suárez’s denials of the existence of pardonable sin in the sensory appetite by claiming that without will there is no sin at all, see Suárez, De actibus qui voncantur passiones, disp. 5, s. 5, 562–3.
- 112.
Avicenna, Liber de anima seu Sextus de naturalibus I–II–III, p. 1, ch. 5, 89–90.
- 113.
Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 10, art. 2, c., 300: ‘Responsio. Dicendum, quod memoria secundum communem usum loquentium pro notitia praeteritorum accipitur. Cognoscere autem praeteritum ut est praeteritum, est illius cuius est cognoscere nunc ut nunc: hoc autem est sensus’.
- 114.
Thomas de Aquino, STh. I, q. 78, art. 4, c., 256: ‘Ad conservandum autem eas, vis memorativa, quae est thesaurus quidam huiusmodi intentionum. Cuius signum est, quod principium memorandi fit in animalibus ex aliqua huiusmodi intentione, puta quod est nocivum vel conveniens. Et ipsa ratio praeteriti, quam attendit memoria, inter huiusmodi intentiones computatur’. For this connection, see also Pasnau (2002a, 280–1).
- 115.
Aquinas, De memoria et reminiscencia, ch. 1, 106: ‘Semper enim, cum anima memoratur, pronunciat se prius audiuisse aliquid uel sensisse uel intellexisse.’ See also ibid., ch. 3, 115: ‘Si autem anima conuertatur ad ipsum [phantasma] in quantum est ymago eius quod prius uidimus aut intelleximus, hoc pertinet ad actum memorandi’.
- 116.
For this critique, see Perler (2020b, 260–8).
- 117.
Thomas de Aquino, STh. I, q. 79, art. 6, c., 270: ‘Si vero de ratione memoriae sit quod eius obiectum sit praeteritum, ut praeteritum; memoria in parte intellectiva non erit, sed sensitiva tantum, quae est apprehensiva particularium. Praeteritum enim, ut praeteritum, cum significet esse sub determinato tempore, ad conditionem particularis pertinet’.
- 118.
Thomas de Aquino, STh. I, q. 78, art. 4, c., 256: ‘Ex parte autem memorativae, non solum habet memoriam, sicut cetera animalia, in subita recordatione praeteritorum; sed etiam reminiscentiam, quasi syllogistice inquirendo praeteritorum memoriam, secundum individuales intentiones’. For the translation, see Freddoso in Aquinas (2010, 77).
- 119.
Thomas de Aquino, De memoria et reminiscencia, tr. 2, ch. 5, 121.
- 120.
For an emphasis on this capacity in Aquinas, see Lisska, Aquinas’s Theory of Perception, 265–8.
- 121.
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II.19, 100a5–100b2, 257–9.
- 122.
Aristotle, Metaphysics I.1, 980b30–981a3, 5.
- 123.
Thomas de Aquino, Sententia libri Metaphysicae, book 1, l. 1, n. 15: ‘Experimentum enim est ex collatione plurium singularium in memoria receptorum. Huiusmodi autem collatio est homini propria, et pertinet ad vim cogitativam, quae ratio particularis dicitur: quae est collativa intentionum individualium, sicut ratio universalis intentionum universalium’.
- 124.
Thomas de Aquino, Expositio Posteriorum, book 2, l. 20, n. 14: ‘Qualiter autem hoc unum accipi possit, manifestat consequenter. Manifestum est enim quod singulare sentitur proprie et per se, sed tamen sensus est quodammodo etiam ipsius universalis. Cognoscit enim Calliam non solum in quantum est Callias, sed etiam in quantum est hic homo, et similiter Socratem in quantum est hic homo’. [my italics].
- 125.
Ibid.: ‘Si autem ita esset quod sensus apprehenderet solum id quod est particularitatis, et nullo modo cum hoc apprehenderet universalem naturam in particulari, non esset possibile quod ex apprehensione sensus causaretur in nobis cognitio universalis […] Quia igitur universalium cognitionem accipimus ex singularibus, concludit manifestum esse quod necesse est prima universalia principia cognoscere per inductionem. Sic enim, scilicet per viam inductionis, sensus facit universale intus in anima, in quantum considerantur omnia singularia’.
- 126.
For this notion of personal memory as a wide-spread view in late-medieval philosophy, see Knuuttila and Sihvola (2014, 217–8). In fact, Aristotle might have been the first who noticed this feature of memory and who considered it to be a true kind of memory. At the outset of De memoria et reminiscencia, ch. 1, 449b22–3, 291, he says that ‘[…] when a man is exercising his memory he always says in his mind that he has heard, or felt, or thought this before’. For this interpretation of Aristotle, see Sorabji (1972, x–xi). We have seen above that also Aquinas inclines to this view, which he, however, does not explain sufficiently.
- 127.
For this definition and properties of episodic memory, see Fleming (2019, 134).
- 128.
Ibid., 135.
- 129.
For this, see also CDA disp. 8, q. 2, n. 5, t. 2, 50. Speaking about the sense memory Suárez also concedes that the phantasma or the sensible species stored in the memory often get damaged to such an extent that a recollecting person fails to remember many or even all the circumstances associated with the place, time, etc., of a recalled object (ibid.).
- 130.
CDA disp. 6, q. 5, n. 9, t. 2, 526: ‘[…] sensus potest cognoscere rem praeteritam in actu exercito, [considerando scilicet rem quae praeteriit], non praeteritionem ut sic; sicut etiam percipit rem praesentem [in actu exercito]. Considerare vero temporum differentiam illus est intellectus’.
- 131.
CDA disp. 9, q. 10, n. 5, t. 3, 266: ‘[…] sensus tantum cognoscit praeteritum materialiter, intellectus vero etiam formaliter, nam cognoscit ipsam rationem temporis; ergo’.
- 132.
Aristotle, On Memory and Recollection ch. 2, 453a22–3, 311: ‘[…] so the man who is employed in recollecting and search sets in motion a bodily part in which the affection resides’.
- 133.
Ibid., ch. 1, 449b7–8, 289.
- 134.
CDA disp. 8, q. 1, n. 12, t. 3, 24: ‘[…] reminiscentiam potissime fieri ab intellectu, saltem ad discursum et compositiones […]’
- 135.
For this parallel and harmonizing connection of these two powers based on rootedness in the same soul, see CDA disp. 9, q. 7, nn. 7–8, t. 3, 206–8.
- 136.
Ibid., 24–6.
- 137.
CDA disp. 5, q. 6, n. 18, t. 2, 434–6; DM disp. 1, s. 6, n. 23, t. 1, 59–60.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Aristotle. (1984). The Complete Works of Aristotle (J. Barnes, Ed.). The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 2, Bollingen Series 71.2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Secondary Sources
Black, D. L. (2000). Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations. Topoi, 19, 59–75.
Casini, L. (2006). Cognitive and Moral Psychology in Renaissance Philosophy. A Study of Juan Luis Vives’ ‘De anima et vita’. Uppsala, Sweden: Universitetstryukeriet.
Cross, R. (2014). Duns Scotus’s Theory of Cognition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
De Haan, D. D. (2014). Perception and the Vis Cogitativa: A Thomistic Analysis of Aspectual, Actional, and Affectional percepts. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 88(3), 397–437.
Fabro, C. (1938). Knowledge and Perception in Aristotelico-Thomistic Psychology. The New Scholasticism, 12, 337–365.
Fleming, S. (2019). Cognitive Psychology. Waltham Abbey Essex, UK: Ed-Tech Press.
Forigari, L. (1968). Chain of Being. In P. P. Wiener (Ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Vol. 1, pp. 325–335). New York: Charles Scribner’s Son.
Harvey, E. R. (1975). The Inward Wits. Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London.
Hasse, D. N. (2000). Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West. In The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul 1160–1300. London/Turin, Italy: The Warburg Institute–Nino Aragno Editore.
Hasse, D. N. (2014). The Soul’s Faculties. In R. Pasnau, C. van Dyke (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (Vol. 1, pp. 305–319). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Heider, D. (2005). Suárez über das Individuationsprinzip der Akzidenten in dem Licht des thomistischen Lösung. Acta Commeniana et Historica, 19, 71–90.
Heider, D. (2015b). Idea řádu a metodologie Suárezovy psychologie. In D. Heider, L. Novák, J. Samohýl (Eds.), Pluralita tradic: od antiky po novověk (pp. 103–117). In Studia Neoaristotelica: Supplementum II.
Heider, D. (2016a). Aquinas on Sensitive Appetitive Powers and Suárez’s Reductionism in De anima. In I. H. Zorroza (Ed.), Las pasiones y las virtudes en la época de “El Greco” (pp. 129–140). Pamplona, Spain: Cuadernos de pensamiento Español, Universidad de Navarra.
Heider, D. (2017a). The Internal Sense(s) in Early Jesuit Scholasticism. Filosofický časopis, Special issue: Perception in Scholastics and Their Interlocutors (D. Heider, L. Lička, M. Otisk, Eds.), 133–148.
Heider, D. (2017d). Suárez on the Functional Scope of the Imaginative Power. Cauriensia. Revista anual de ciencias eclesiásticas, 12, 135–152.
Heider, D. (2019b). Late Scholastic Debates about External and Internal Senses: In the Direction of Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). In S. Schmid (Ed.), Philosophy of Mind in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. In R. Copenhaver, C. Shields (Eds.), The History of the Philosophy of Mind (Vol. 3, pp. 165–184). London/New York: Routledge.
Heider, D., Machula, T. (2019). Sentidos internos, appetito sensitivo y virtudes cardinales en Cayetano y Suárez. Estudios Filosóficos, 68, 258–270.
Kemp, S., Fletcher, G. J. O. (1993). The Medieval Theory of the Inner Senses. The American Journal of Psychology, 106(4), 559–576.
Klubertanz, G. P. (1952). The Discursive Power. Sources and Doctrines of the Vis Cogitativa according to St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Louis, MO: The Modern Schoolman.
Knuuttila, S., Sihvola, J. (Eds.). (2014). Sourcebook for the History of the Philosophy of Mind. Philosophical Psychology from Plato to Kant (Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind) (Vol. 12). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Lisska, A. J. (2016). Aquinas’s Theory of Perception: An Analytic Reconstruction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Mahoney, E. P. (2000). Pseudo-Dionysius’s Conception of Metaphysical Hierarchy and its Influence on Medieval Philosophy. In T. Boiadjiev, G. Kapriev, A. Speer (Eds.), Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter (pp. 429–475). Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
Montagnes, B. (1968). L’axiome de continuité chez Saint Thomas. Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, 52, 201–221.
Pasnau, R. (2002a). Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature. A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75–89. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Pasnau, R. (2002b). The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, Vol. 3: Mind and Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Pattin, A. (1988). Pour l´historie du sens agent. La controverse entre Barthélemy de Bruges et Jean de Jandun. Ses antécédents et son évolution. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press.
Perler, D. (2014a). Suárez on Consciousness. Vivarium, 52(3–4), 261–286.
Perler, D. (2020b). Eine Person sein. Philosophische Debatten im Spätmittelalter. Philosophische Abhandlungen, Band 119. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Rinaldi, T. (1998). Francisco Suárez. Cognitio singularis materialis: De anima (Vestigia: Studi e strumenti di storiografia filosofica). Bari, Italy: Levante Editori.
Rode, C. (2015). Zugänge zum Selbst: Innere Erfahrung in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff Verlag.
Silva, J. F. (2020). Stop Making Sense(s): Some Late Medieval and Very Late Medieval Views on Faculty Psychology. In S. N. Mousavian, J. L. Fink (Eds.), The Internal Senses in the Aristotelian Tradition (Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind) (Vol. 22, pp. 45–67). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Sorabji, R. (1972). Aristotle on Memory. London: Gerald Duckworth.
South, J. B. (2001a). Suárez and the Problem of External Sensation. Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 10(2), 217–240.
South, J. B. (2001b). Suárez on Imagination. Vivarium, 39(1), 119–158.
South, J. B. (2002). Singular and Universal in Suárez’s Account of Cognition. The Review of Metaphysics, 55(4), 785–823.
Spruit, L. (1995). Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge. Vol. 2: Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy. Leiden, The Netherlands/Boston, MA: Brill.
Tachau, K. H. (1993). What Senses and Intellect Do: Argument and Judgment in Late Medieval Theories of Knowledge. In K. Jakobi (Ed.), Argumentationstheorie. Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns (pp. 653–670). Leiden, The Netherlands/Boston, MA: Brill.
Toivanen, J. (2013b). Perception and the Internal Senses: Peter of John Olivi on the Cognitive Functions of the Sensitive Soul. Leiden, The Netherlands/Boston, MA: Brill.
Wolfson, H. A. (1935). The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophic Texts. Harvard Theological Review, 38(2), 69–133.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Heider, D. (2021). Internal Senses. In: Aristotelian Subjectivism: Francisco Suárez’s Philosophy of Perception. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67341-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67341-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-67340-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-67341-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)