display all the ideas for this combination of texts
11 ideas
| 5051 | The intellect has potential to think, like a tablet on which nothing has yet been written [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The intellect is in a way potentially the object of thought, but nothing in actuality before it thinks, and the potentiality is like that of the tablet on which there is nothing actually written. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 429b31) | |
| A reaction: This passage is referred to by Leibniz, and is the origin of the concept of the 'tabula rasa'. Aristotle need not be denying innate ideas, but merely describing the phenomenology of the moment before a train of thought begins. |
| 16723 | Perception of sensible objects is virtually never wrong [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perception of the special objects of sense is never in error or admits the least possible amount of falsehood. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 428b19) | |
| A reaction: This is, surprisingly, the view which was raised and largely rejected in 'Theaetetus'. It became a doctrine of Epicureanism, and seems to make Aristotle a thoroughgoing empiricist, though that is not so clear elsewhere. I think Aristotle is right. |
| 1724 | Perception necessitates pleasure and pain, which necessitates appetite [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Where there is perception there is also pleasure and pain, and where there are these, of necessity also appetite. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 413b23) |
| 1730 | Why do we have many senses, and not just one? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A possible line of inquiry would be into the question for what purpose we have many senses and not just one. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 425b04) |
| 17711 | Our minds take on the form of what is being perceived [Aristotle, by Mares] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle famously holds that in perception our minds take on the form of what is being perceived. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE]) by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 08.2 | |
| A reaction: [References in Aristotle needed here...] |
| 1725 | Why can't we sense the senses? And why do senses need stimuli? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is there not also a sense of the senses themselves? And why don't the senses produce sensation without external bodies, since they contain elements? | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 417a03) |
| 1732 | Sense organs aren't the end of sensation, or they would know what does the sensing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Flesh is not the ultimate sense-organ. To suppose that it is requires the supposition that on contact with the object the sense-organ itself discerns what is doing the discerning. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 426b16) |
| 1728 | Many objects of sensation are common to all the senses [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Common sense-objects are movement, rest, number, shape and size, which are not special to any one sense, but common to all. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 418a18) |
| 1727 | Some objects of sensation are unique to one sense, where deception is impossible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Now I call that sense-object 'special' that does not admit of being perceived by another sense and about which it is impossible to be deceived. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 418a15) |
| 1734 | In moral thought images are essential, to be pursued or avoided [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In the thinking soul, images play the part of percepts, and the assertion or negation of good or bad is invariably accompanied by avoidance or pursuit, which is the reason for the soul's never thinking without an image. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 431a15) |
| 1726 | We may think when we wish, but not perceive, because universals are within the mind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Perception is of particular things, but knowledge is of universals, which are in a way in the soul itself. Thus a man may think whenever he wishes, but not perceive. | |
| From: Aristotle (De Anima [c.329 BCE], 417b22) |